The race for Quebec had been none the less desperate because the British had not known of the danger from the south till after Arnold had suddenly emerged from the wilds of Maine and was well on his way to the mouth of the Chaudiere, which falls into the St Lawrence seven miles above the city.  Arnold’s subsequent change of sides earned him the execration of the Americans.  But there can be no doubt whatever that if he had got through in time to capture Quebec he would have become a national hero of the United States.  He had the advantage of leading picked men; though nearly three hundred faint-hearts did turn back half-way.  But, even with picked men, his feat was one of surpassing excellence.  His force went in eleven hundred strong.  It came out, reduced by desertion as well as by almost incredible hardships, with barely seven hundred.  It began its toilsome ascent of the Kennebec towards the end of September, carrying six weeks’ supplies in the bad, hastily built boats or on the men’s backs.  Daniel Morgan and his Virginian riflemen led the way.  Aaron Burr was present as a young volunteer.  The portages were many and trying.  The settlements were few at first and then wanting altogether.  Early in October the drenched portagers were already sleeping in their frozen clothes.  The boats began to break up.  Quantities of provisions were lost.  Soon there was scarcely anything left but flour and salt pork.  It took nearly a fortnight to get past the Great Carrying Place, in sight of Mount Bigelow.  Rock, bog, and freezing slime told on the men, some of whom began to fall sick.  Then came the chain of ponds leading into Dead River.  Then the last climb up to the height-of-land beyond which lay the headwaters of the Chaudiere, which takes its rise in Lake Megantic.

There were sixty miles to go beyond the lake, and a badly broken sixty miles they were, before the first settlement of French Canadians could be reached.  There was no trail.  Provisions were almost at an end.  Sickness increased.  The sick began to die.  ’And what was it all for?  A chance to get killed!  The end of the march was Quebec —­impregnable!’ On the 24th of October Arnold, with fifteen other men, began ’a race against time, a race against starvation’ by pushing on ahead in a desperate effort to find food.  Within a week he had reached the first settlement, after losing three of his five boats with everything in them.  Three days later, and not one day too soon, the French Canadians met his seven hundred famishing men with a drove of cattle and plenty of provisions.  The rest of the way was toilsome enough.  But it seemed easy by comparison.  The habitants were friendly, but very shy about enlisting, in spite of Washington’s invitation to ’range yourselves under the standard of general liberty.’  The Indians were more responsive, and nearly fifty joined on their own terms.  By the 8th of November Arnold was marching down the south shore of the St Lawrence, from the Chaudiere to Point Levis, in full view of Quebec.  He had just received a dispatch ten days old from Montgomery by which he learned that St Johns was expected to fall immediately and that Schuyler was no longer with the army at the front.  But he could not tell when the junction of forces would be made; and he saw at once that Quebec was on the alert because every boat had been either destroyed or taken over to the other side.