The barracks in the present Cambridgeport were much more numerous, and held about 3400 men. Nor were these two sets by any means all. For the large division of troops stationed on the hills to the north of the town, and virtually unprovided with any other billets, an astonishing number of these long sheds were built. On Winter Hill 54 went up, including an extra big one 120 feet in length. Thirty-three of them, however, were “gardhouses, offices, etc.,” only 18 × 16, so the total number of men housed there was 3300. On Prospect Hill were 41, of which 30 were barracks 108 × 16, holding 3460 altogether. Others at Lechmere Point, at Brookline, at Roxbury, and at Dorchester brought the “Number of all Sorts of Buildings” enumerated in the return up to the impressive total of 223, not to mention “1400 feet in length of huts Not fraimed”’ at Winter Hill, “Posts Sot in the ground, mostly with floores Chimnys Cabbins &c about 16 feet Wide,’’—probably in process of construction when the Evacuation took place.[1]
After that world-shaking confession of British inferiority, the army rapidly forsook its winter quarters and moved off to New York. The dispossessed collegians
- ↑ These figures are not without interest, inasmuch as they show the earliest systematic attempts to house the American Army—attempts which on the whole seem to have been highly successful. During this first winter the troops were probably better quartered than in any subsequent campaign of the war.
