the
Susquehanna below the dam, and load them, that they might be ready to
depart the next morning." At six o'clock in the evening the sluice-way
was broken up, and the water filled the river, which was almost dry the
day before.[51]

On Monday morning the start was made. Each of the boats was manned by
three men. The light infantry and rifle corps under Colonel Butler
formed an advance guard. The soldiers marched on either side of the
river. Another guard of infantry marched in the rear, and in the centre
of the land lines the horses and cattle were driven. "The first day,"
says McKendry, "the boats made thirty miles, and the troops marching
each side of the river made sixteen."

The freshet caused by the sudden release of the pent-up water swelled
the stream for a distance of more than a hundred miles. Campbell says
that as far south as Tioga the rise in the water was great enough to
flow back into the western branch, causing the Chemung River to reverse
its course. The _Gazetteer of New York_ said that the Indians upon the
banks of the Susquehanna, witnessing the extraordinary rise of the river
in midsummer, without any apparent cause, were struck with superstitious
dread, and in the very outset were disheartened at the apparent
interposition of the Great Spirit in favor of their foes. Stone observes
that the sudden swelling of the river, bearing upon its surge a flotilla
of more than two hundred vessels, through a region of primitive forests,
was a spectacle which might well appall the untutored inhabitants of the
region thus invaded.

Clinton's brigade joined General Sullivan's division at Tioga Point on
the 22nd of August. From this place the combined forces began a campaign
of ruthless destruction against the Indians of the Genesee country.
Stone says the Indians were hunted like wild beasts, their villages were
burned, their corn was destroyed, their fruit trees were cut down; till
neither house, nor field of corn, nor inhabitants remained in the whole
country. The power of the Iroquois was gone. Homeless in their own land,
the Indians marched to Niagara, where they passed the winter under the
protection of the English.[52]

The Sullivan expedition had accomplished its purpose, with the loss of
only forty men.

In 1788, in the digging of the cellar of William Cooper's first house,
which stood on Main Street at the present entrance of the Cooper
Grounds, a large iron cannon was discovered, said to have been