one pound of salt
beef and some tea for food. They made their tea in a tin quart
cup, and produced fire by a flint and the blade of a jack-knife.
For four days before they were retaken, they had nothing for food
but tea, and were so weak they could hardly walk. The forces at
St. Johns were then commanded by Col. St. Legcr, a brutal drunlc-
ard, who ordered the prisoners to be ironed together, and put them
in a dungeon for fourteen days. At the end of which time, and
ironed hand in hand to each other, they were sent to Chamblee,
and from there by the rivers Sorel and St. Lawrence to Quebec.
At Quebec they were returned to their old prison, in which they
remained until June 1782, when they Avere brought from thenceto
Whitehall and there exchanged for British prisoners. From their
capture to their exchange was three years and eight months.
After the escape of the Ferrises from below Quebec, the prisoners,
which remained in prison at Quebec were divided, and a part placed
on board a prison ship in the river. Soon afterward, camp fever, as
HISTOllY OF ADDISON COUNTY. ^6
it vras tlieacalleJ, broke out among tliem, and many of them died.
Of the two hundred and forty-four prisoners taken in the neighbor-
hood of Lake Champlain, in November 1778, and carried to
Canada in the schooners IMaria and Carleton, only forty-eight were
known to have returned. The elder Ferris died in the year 1811,
at the age of ninety-two ; and of the other forty-seven. Squire
Ferris, of Vergennes, his son and fellow prisoner, is supposed to be
the only