Trailing behind Morgan’s detachment by a day or two, the main body of Arnold’s force headed up the Kennebec River some twenty miles to Fort Halifax, the last settlement they would find on their route until they reached the upper Chaudiere River near Quebec City. Private Henry recorded his impressions of the primitive outpost.
"On the evening of the 23d of September, our party arrived at Fort Halifax, situated on the point formed by a junction of the Sebasticook and Kennebec rivers. Here our commander, Steele, was accosted by a Captain Harrison, or Huddlestone, inviting him and the company to his house. The invitation was gladly accepted, as the accommodation at the fort, which consisted of old block houses and a stockade in a ruinous state, did not admit of much comfort; besides it was inhabited, as our friend the captain said, by a rank tory [British sympathizer]."
Pvt. John J. Henry, in his memoirHenry, John Joseph, Account of Arnold’s campaign against Quebec, and of the hardships and sufferings of that band of heroes who traversed the wilderness of Maine from Cambridge to the St. Lawrence, in the autumn of 1775 (Albany: J. Munsell, 1877), p. 16.