We lost nearly all our remaining provisions, equipment, our doctor’s medical kit, and my field desk. Thankfully, all but one of the rifles was saved as were four well-sealed French powder kegs and the last half-barrel of rum.

Cold, starving, and demoralized, our Expedition now totals fewer than 650 men of the original 1,100. Only Captain Morgan’s resilience and belief in God’s providence keeps us moving. Though suffering as much as any man in our company, Captain Morgan constantly moves up and down our ranks, helping, encouraging, and assuring us Col. Arnold will have provisions awaiting our arrival.

By the first days of November, our starving men are eating soap, beeswax candles, hair grease, oiled moccasins, shot pouches, and even a company commander’s dog. Yet, our Riflemen stagger on, many supported by their rifles.

Thanks be to God, on Friday morning November 2nd, the Steele-Church scouting party dispatched by Colonel Arnold to buy provisions from French settlers in Sartigan at the bottom of the Chaudière River valley returned, driving before them a herd of cattle and aided by an Indian named Natanis.

Our officers had to force their starving men to start fires and cook the beef so they would not eat it raw as the animals were being butchered.

Revived by the food we so desperately needed, on Sunday, November 5th, Colonel Arnold had our Virginia Rifle Company resume our Advance Security mission and lead our much depleted expedition out of the Chaudière valley and head for Pointe Lévis on the south side of the Saint Lawrence River, directly across from Quebec City.

We moved at night, attempting to avoid detection from lookouts on the walls of the city and aboard two recently arrived Royal Navy combatants, the frigate HMS Lizard and the sloop Hunter and four other armed British vessels anchored in the St. Lawrence.

On Thursday, November 9th we arrived at Pointe Lévis where we were joined by a band of thirty-seven Indians and twenty-three French Canadians who professed their desire to join our fight against the British.

By the time we ended our eight-week, 380-mile march and set up camp at Pointe Lévis, across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec, the Expeditionary Force numbered just 597. We lost sixty-three men from privation, drowning, injury, and freezing. Seventy-six turned back because of illness or injury. Eleven were charged with desertion, and the treachery and cowardice of Lieutenant Colonel Enos cost us another 353. But our Virginia Rifle Company has lost only one man drowned and suffered no deserters, unique among all the units which set out from Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 11th.