Campus Martius

Now listen to this description which Parson Cutler gave us of Campus Martius, and I have since come to know that he did not set forth its characteristics any too strongly.

It is a kind of house, or castle, if you please, instead of a regular fort, made in the form of a hollow square, of which the sides measure one hundred and eighty feet, and is surrounded by a heavy line of palisades,—meaning a high log fence, as protection against the Indians.

This building contains seventy-two rooms, each eighteen feet square or more, and General Putnam had told the Parson that in case of necessity nine hundred people could live within its walls.

Surely it seems like a city of itself, when one attempts to go from end to end inside the broad passages, and sees the doors leading to rooms in which an entire family might contrive to live with more or less comfort.

Parson Cutler was twenty-nine days driving from Ipswich to Marietta in his sulky, so he told us; but do not understand that such a journey may always be made in so short a time. He took advantage of the best season of the year in which to make the trip, and returned before the snow came; consequently, and because of traveling without very much baggage, and with a stout horse to draw his light sulky, he could make many more miles in a day than could such wagons as ours.