"My Indians are on their heels and we'll soon have news of their whereabouts." Then the soldiery began smashing in doors and windows right and left, laughing and swearing, and dragging out of the houses everything they contained.
So precipitate had been the enemy's flight that they had left everything--food still cooking, all their household and personal utensils; and I saw in the road great piles of kettles, plates, knives, deerskins, beaver-pelts, bearhides, packs of furs, and bolts of striped linen, to which heaps our soldiers were adding every minute.
Others came to fire the town; and it was sad to see these humble homes puff up in a cloud of smoke and sparks, then burst into vivid flame.

In the orchards our men were plying their axes or girdling the heavily-fruited trees; field after field of grain was fired, and the flames swept like tides across them.
The corn was in the milk, and what our men could not burn, using the houses for kilns, they trampled and cut with their hangers--whole regiments marching through these fields, destroying the most noble corn I ever saw, for it was so high that it topped the head of a man on horseback.
So high, also, stood the hay, and it was sad to see it burn.
And now, all around in this forest paradise, our army was gathered, destroying, raging, devastating the fairest land that I had seen in many a day.

All the country was aflame; smoke rolled up, fouling the blue sky, burying woodlands, blotting out the fields and streams.
From the knoll to which I had moved to watch the progress of my scouts, I could see an entire New Jersey regiment chasing horses and cattle; another regiment piling up canoes, fish-weirs, and the hewn logs of bridges, to make a mighty fire; still other regiments trampling out the last vestige of green stuff in the pretty gardens.
Not a shot had yet been fired; there was no sound save the excited and terrifying roar of a vast armed mob obliterating in its fury the very well-springs that enabled its enemies to exist.
Cattle, sheep, horses were being driven off down the trail by which we had come; men everywhere were stuffing their empty sacks with green vegetables and household plunder; the town fairly whistled with flame, and the smoke rose in a great cloud-shape very high, and hung above us, tenting us from the sun.
In the midst of this uproar the Grey-Feather came speeding to me with news that the enemy was a little way upstream and seemed inclined to make a stand.

I immediately informed the General; and soon the bugle-horns of the light infantry sounded, and away we raced ahead of them.
I remember seeing an entire company marching with muskmelons pinned on their bayonets, all laughing and excited; and I heard General Sullivan bawl at them: "You damned unmilitary rascals, do you mean to open fire on 'em with vegetables ?" Everybody was laughing, and the General grinned as Hand's bugle-horns played us in.
But it was another matter when the Seneca rifles cracked, and a sergeant and a drummer lad of the 11th Pennsylvania fell.

The smooth-bores cracked again, and four more soldiers tumbled forward sprawling, the melons on their bayonets rolling off into the bushes.
Carbury, marching forward beside me, dropped across my path; and as I stooped over him gave me a ghastly look.
"Don't let them scalp me," he said--but his own men came running and picked him up, and I ran forward with the others toward a wooded hill where puffs of smoke spotted the bushes.
Then the long, rippling volleys of Hand's men crashed out, one after another, and after a little of this their bugle-horns sounded the charge.
But the Senecas did not wait; and it was like chasing weasels in a stone wall, for even my Indians could not come up with them.
However, about two o'clock, returning to that part of the town across the river, which Colonel Dearborn's men were now setting afire, we received a smart volley from some ambushed Senecas, and Adjutant Huston and a guide fell.
It was here that the Sagamore made his kill--just beyond the first house, in some alders; and he came back with a Seneca scalp at his girdle, as did the Grey-Feather also.
"Hiokatoo's warriors," remarked the Oneida briefly, wringing out his scalp and tying it to his belt.
I looked up at the hills in sickened silence.