"Another of the company held a barrel stave perpendicularly in his
hands, with one edge close to his side, while one of his comrades, at
the same distance, and in the manner before mentioned, shot several
bullets through it, without any apprehension of danger on either side.

"The spectators appearing to be amazed at these feats, were told that
there were upwards of fifty persons in the same company who could do
the same thing; that there was not one who could not 'plug nineteen
bullets out of twenty,' as they termed it, within an inch of the head
of a ten-penny nail.

"In short, to evince the confidence they possessed in these kind of
arms, some of them proposed to stand with apples on their heads, while
others at the same distance undertook to shoot them off, but the
people who saw the other experiments declined to be witnesses of this.

"At night a great fire was kindled around a pole planted in the Court
House Square, where the company with the Captain at their head, all
naked to the waist and painted like savages (except the Captain, who
was in an Indian shirt), indulged a vast concourse of people with a
perfect exhibition of a war-dance and all the manoeuvres of Indians;
holding council, going to war; circumventing their enemies by defiles;
ambuscades; attacking; scalping, etc. It is said by those who are
judges that no representation could possibly come nearer the
original. The Captain's expertness and agility, in particular, in
these experiments, astonished every beholder. This morning they will
set out on their march for Cambridge."

From the _Virginia Gazette_ of July 22nd, 1775, we make the