CHAPTER III.
THE JOURNEY TO PHILADELPHIA The _New York Mercury_ of November 4, 1770, contains this item: "John Irons, Jr., and Solomon Binkus, the famous scout, arrived Wednesday morning on the schooner _Ariel_ from Albany.

Mr.Binkus is on his way to Alexandria, Virginia, where he is to meet Major Washington and accompany him to the Great Kanawha River in the Far West." Solomon was soon to meet an officer with whom he was to find the amplest scope for his talents.

Jack was on his way to Philadelphia.
They had found the ship crowded and Jack and two other boys "pigged together"-- in the expressive phrase of that time--on the cabin floor, through the two nights of their journey.

Jack minded not the hardness of the floor, but there was much drinking and arguing and expounding of the common law in the forward end of the cabin, which often interrupted his slumbers.
He was overawed by the length and number of the crowded streets of New York and by "the great height" of many of its buildings.

The grandeur of Broadway and the fashionable folk who frequented it was the subject of a long letter which he indited to his mother from The City Tavern.
He took the boat to Amboy as Benjamin Franklin had done, but without mishap, and thence traveled by stage to Burlington.