Rogers with his partisan band and Black Rifle also disappeared in the wilderness, and Robert looked longingly after them, but he and his friends were still held at the Albany camp, as the march of the army was delayed, owing to the fact that five provincial governors, practically independent of one another, had a hand in its management, and they could not agree upon a plan.  Braddock’s great defeat had a potent influence in the north, and now they were all for caution.

While they delayed Robert went into Albany one bright morning to see Mynheer Jacobus Huysman, who showed much anxiety about him these days.  The little Dutch city looked its best, a comfortable place on its hills, inhabited by comfortable people, but swarming now with soldiers and even with Mohawks, all of whom brought much business to the thrifty burghers.  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.  The world bred no more haughty savages than they.  Tall men, with high cheek bones, and fierce eyes, they wore little clothing in the summer weather, save now and then a blanket of brilliant color for the sake of adornment.  There were also some Onondagas, as proud as the Mohawks, but not so fierce.

A few Virginians and Marylanders, come to cooperate with the northern forces, were present, and they, like the New Englanders, were of pure British blood.  Now and then a Swede, broad of face, from the Jersey settlements could be seen, and there was scarcely a nation in western Europe that did not have at least one representative in the streets of Albany.