livelier than we associate with ministerial utterances of those days:
It is very diverting to walk among the camps. They are as different in their form as the owners are in their dress; and every tent is a portraiture of the temper and taste of the persons, who encamp in it. Some are made of boards, and some of sailcloth. Some partly of one and partly of the other. Again others are made of stone and turf, brick or brush. Some are thrown up in a hurry, others curiously wrought with doors and windows, done with wreaths and withes in the manner of a basket. Some are your proper tents and marquees, looking like the regular camp of the enemy. In these are the Rhode Islanders, who are furnished with tent-equipage, and everything in the most exact English style. However, I think this great variety is rather a beauty than a blemish in the army.[1]
But as cold weather drew on, and it became evident that the British shut up in Boston were playing a waiting game which might last almost indefinitely, the necessity arose of providing more permanent and suitable quarters for the “army,” the Cambridge section of which had grown to more than 4000 men. A regular series of temporary barracks was therefore begun, including some on the Common and some apparently in the College Yard. From a ‘‘return” dated April 4, 1776,[2] it appears that in “Cambridge Town” and at “Number Two” (the fort at Putnam Avenue and Franklin Street) there were no less than 44 of these structures—not only barracks but “Shops and Stores,” “Gard houses,” “Offices,” a carpenter shop, and an armorer’s shop.
