Albany had its profit out of everything, the river commerce, the fur trade, and war itself.
Robert, as he walked along, watched with interest the crowd which was, in truth, cosmopolitan, despite the smallness of the place.

Some of the Colonials had uniforms of blue faced with red, of which they were very proud, but most of them were in the homespun attire of every day.

They were armed with their own rifles.

Only the English had bayonets so far.
The Americans instead carried hatchets or tomahawks at their belts, and the hatchet had many uses.

Every man also carried a big jack or clasp knife which, too, had its many uses.
The New Englanders, who were most numerous in the camp, were of pure British blood, a race that had become in the American climate tall, thin and very muscular, enduring of body and tenacious of spirit, religious, ambitious, thinking much of both worldly gain and the world hereafter.
Among them moved the people of Dutch blood from the province of New York, generally short and fat like their ancestors, devoted to good living, cheerful in manner, but hard and unscrupulous in their dealing with the Indians, and hence a menace to the important alliance with the Hodenosaunee.
There were the Germans, also, most of them descendants of the fugitives from the Palatinate, after it had been ravaged by the generals of Louis XIV, a quiet, humble people, industrious, honest, sincerely religious, low at present in the social scale, and patronized by the older families of English or Dutch blood, perhaps not dreaming that their race would become some day the military terror of the world.
The Mohawks, who passed freely through the throng, were its most picturesque feature.