However, a band of "military adventurers" set out, under the
leadership of General Phineas Lyman, who had been in command of
Connecticut's troops all through the wars, and Landlord Putnam was one
of them.
Urged, perhaps, by his admirers to preserve some chronicle of his doings
this time (having been so neglectful in this respect in the past) our
hero actually began a journal, writing on the blank leaves of the
"orderly book" which he used in his Havana campaign. This book, doubly
interesting to the present generation, is still preserved by a lineal
descendant of Putnam, and attests to the fact that the soldier of many
wars was not equal to the intellectual effort of writing even a legible
diary of his doings. He soon gave it up, in fact; but the few entries
he made are exceedingly quaint and simple, as for example:
"friday ye forst of jenauary, 1773--this Day no work don--went to
Church.... satorday ye 2--this day taking in goods for ye
voige--good weathor. thorsday ye 7--this was a varey good Day and
had almost all completed. Satorday ye 9 of Jenauary--had all things
on bord and ready for sailing But the wind was so much to ye south
it would not Do.
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