98 TRAVELS THROUGH LOWER CANABAt 
I should imagine, in a great measure to their 
filthiness; for the men are as stout and hardy, 
apparently as any in the world. The western 
army of the States has been most shamefully 
appointed from the very outset. I heard Ge¬ 
neral Wayne, then the commander in chief, 
declare at Philadelphia, that a short time after 
they had begun their march, more than one 
third of his men were attacked in the woods, 
at the same period, with a dysentery,* that the 
surgeons had not even been furnished with a 
medicine chest; and that nothing could have 
saved the greater part of the troops from death, 
had not one of the young surgeons fortu¬ 
nately discovered, after many different things 
had been tried in vain, that the bark of the 
root of a particular sort of yellow poplar tree 
was a powerful antidote to the disorder. Many 
times also, he said, his army had been on the 
point of suffering from famine in their own 
country, owing to the carelessness of their 
commissaries. So badly indeed had the army 
been supplied, even latterly, with provisions, 
that when notice was sent to the federal ge¬ 
neral by the British officers, that they had re¬ 
ceived orders to deliver up their respective posts 
pursuant to the treaty, and that they were 
prepared to do so whenever he was ready to 
take possession of them, an answer was Re¬ 
turned, that unless the British officers could 
