The force besieging Boston consisted at first chiefly of New
England militia, with companies of minute-men, so called because
of their supposed readiness to fight at a minute's notice.
Washington had been told that he should find 20,000 men under his
command; he found, in fact, a nominal army of 17,000, with
probably not more than 14,000 effective, and the number tended to
decline as the men went away to their homes after the first vivid
interest gave way to the humdrum of military life.
The extensive camp before Boston, as Washington now saw it,
expressed the varied character of his strange command. Cambridge,
the seat of Harvard College, was still only a village with a few
large houses and park-like grounds set among fields of grain, now
trodden down by the soldiers. Here was placed in haphazard style
the motley housing of a military camp. The occupants had followed
their own taste in building. One could see structures covered
with turf, looking like lumps of mother earth, tents made of sail
cloth, huts of bare boards, huts of brick and stone, some having
doors and windows of wattled basketwork. There were not enough
huts to house the army nor camp-kettles for cooking. Blankets
were so few that many of the men were without covering at night.
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