before, the second brother shot as the former had done.

"By this exhibition I was more astonished than pleased, but will you
believe me when I tell you that one of the men took the board, and
placing it between his legs, stood with his back to a tree, while
another drove the centre?

"What would a regular army of considerable strength in the forests of
America do with one thousand of these men, who want nothing to
preserve their health but water from the spring; with a little parched
corn (with what they can easily procure by hunting); and who, wrapped
in their blankets in the dead of night, would choose the shade of a
tree for their covering, and the earth for their bed?"

The descriptions we have quoted apply to the rifle companies of 1775,
but they are a good general description of the abilities of the
riflemen raised in the succeeding years of the war, many indeed being
the same men who first volunteered in 1775. In the possession of one
of his descendants is a letter from one of these men written many
years after the Revolution to the son of an old comrade in arms,
giving an account of that comrade's experiences during a part of the
war. The letter was written by Major Henry Bedinger of Berkeley
County, Virginia, to a son of General Samuel Finley.

Henry Bedinger was descended from an old German family. His
grandfather had emigrated to America from Alsace in 1737 to escape
persecution for his religious beliefs. The highest rank that Bedinger
attained in the War of the Revolution was that of captain. He was a
Knight of the Order of the Cincinnati, and he was, after the war, a
major of the militia of Berkeley County. The document in possession of