until ready to move further on. He must have been surprised that the British generals failed to see how easily they could have landed above him and hemmed him in. But they went to sleep quietly instead. For the Americans there was no repose. A situation more perilous could hardly be imagined. All night long the work went on, and just as the sun was rising on the 15th, three British men-of-war rounded the Battery, "fired smartly at the town," and anchored in the Hudson. Of course there was no further opportunity to remove army stores by water.

The morning was one of alarms. Five British war vessels an hour later sailed into the East river, anchored in Kip's Bay within fifty yards of the American breast-works, and commenced a brisk cannonading. The occupants of Kip's mansion took refuge in the cellar. Very soon eighty-four flat-bottomed boats, filled with British troops in bright scarlet uniforms, appeared upon the East river, making it look like a clover-bed. Their occupants in landing under the protection of their ships, sent the several detachments stationed along the shore to delay their approach, flying before them, and the scenes were enacted which have been so often and variously described. Our interest, however, centres about the half-formed column in the city, so suddenly and distressingly endangered. Ready or not ready it must march at once or never. In any case, it could not be a swift-moving body. It was two miles long and included about three thousand five-hundred persons, counting the women and children and the hangers on. There were but few wagons. The guns were dragged by hand, the soldiers were all on foot, as well as most of the people, and they started on their thirteen mile march without having had any sleep for two or more nights and days, and very little food. As the train, shaped by the heroic officers into something like an orderly procession, moved slowly along Broadway, passing what is now City Hall Park, Putnam met Washington on the road at about 42d street, and paused a moment for hasty consultation, then lashed his horse into a foam as he rode towards the city to hurry on the column, which by the time he reached it had worked its weary way as far as Bleecker street. Aaron Burr, Putnam's aide de camp, dashed toward the city in advance of the general, to convey orders to General Silliman, who had been left with his brigade to guard the city until the other troops could be withdrawn, and was now in imminent peril. He had followed the train to Bayard's Hill fort, just above Canal street, and with him was Knox with a detachment of artillery which included Alexander Hamilton and his company. They knew the enemy had landed at Kip's Bay and was hurrying down the old Bowery road, and supposed all avenues above them were closed, and

retreat impossible. Burr came upon the little garrison just as they were finishing their preparations to fight until the bitter end. He assured Silliman that he knew every inch of ground on Manhattan Island, and could pilot the party through farm-roads, lanes, and byways, and the brave commander yielded to his persuasive eloquence, moving with celerity. Overtaking the column, Silliman's party formed the rear-guard. Silliman, Putman, and many other officers, were constantly on the outlook for an attack, riding furiously from front to rear, and from rear to front, stimulating the weary travelers to increased speed by encouraging words and their own coolness and intrepidity. Burr was everywhere conspicuous. He was then a young man of only twenty, boyish-looking and fearless. He led the train west of 8th avenue from 15th street north, through pathways which had become familiar to him in his frequent visits to the home of the Clarks, at Chelsea, and keeping in the woods, often countermarching, or crooking through irregular lanes to avoid being discovered by the enemy's ships in the Hudson, they finally reached the old Bloomingdale highway in safety, and about sunset turned into a narrow lane not far from Grant's tomb, which brought them to the Kingsbridge road, and thence to Harlem Heights, where they encamped at a late hour. They had been given up for lost by their friends, wrote Colonel Humphrey. "That night," he says, "our soldiers extremely fatigued by the sultry march of the day, their clothes wet by a severe shower of rain towards the evening, their blood chilled by the cold wind that produced a sudden change in the temperature of the air, and their hearts sunk within them by the loss of baggage, artillery, and works in which they had been taught to place great confidence, lay upon their arms, covered only by the clouds of an uncomfortable sky. . . The regiments that had been least exposed to fatigue that day furnished the necessary picquets to secure the army from surprise."

The British line was extended across the island from Horen's Hook on the East River at 90th street, to Bloomingdale Heights on the Hudson. Directly after Putnam and his train passed the junction of the Bloomingdale and Kingsbridge roads, Howe and his officers took possession of the Apthorpe House, which Washington had but just vacated. Dr. Thatcher says in his journal that "ten minutes would have been sufficient for the enemy to have secured the road at this turn, and entirely cut off General Putnam's retreat." Howe's army was thrown out in front for a mile and a half, the Highlanders and Hessians quartered at convenient distances apart, and General Leslie commanding the vanguard overlooking Manhattanville from the south. Lieutenant George Harris, of the Fifth

Regiment of Foot, wrote: "After landing in York Island we drove the Americans into their works beyond the 8th mile-stone from New York, and thus got possession of the best part of the island. We took post opposite to them, placed our picquets, borrowed a sheep, killed, cooked, and ate some of it, and then went to sleep on a gate, which we took the liberty of throwing off its hinges, covering our feet with an American tent, for which we should have cut holes and pitched it had it not been so dark." On the other hand, Captain Gradon writes from the American camp: "I was on guard at a place distinguished by the appellation of The Point of Rocks, which skirted the road leading to Kingsbridge. This was our most advanced picket towards New York, and only separated from that of the enemy by a valley of a few hundred yards over."

At the termination of this valley by the river's edge there was a marginal meadow called Matjte Davit's Fly, a well-known landmark, that for a century had been mentioned in charters, patents, deeds, and acts of the legislature, and laid down with the utmost precision by actual survey. A bird's-eye view of the valley, embracing this meadow, was made by J. H. Hill, and lithographed by Endicott, in 1834, one copy of which is still in existence in this city.

The headquarters of the commanders of the two hostile forces were three miles apart, Howe and his generals at the Apthorpe mansion, and Washington and his generals at the Morris mansion, and their respective armies being thrown out before them face to face, the British on Bloomingdale Heights, the Americans on Harlem Heights-their picquets, on each side of Manhattanville valley, watched each other. In full view of both lines of picquets Harlem Plains stretched away to the east, its fields covered with the fruits, grain, and other products of early autumn. The position of the armies at this date is an established fact, about which there has never been any difference of opinion, and it has important bearing upon the events that followed.

Washington naturally expected to be pursued and attacked, and, as can readily be seen, he was unprepared. Very little work had been done, as yet, in the way of fortifications-the only intrenchments of any account being near the Morris mansion. Before daylight, on the morning of the 16th, he sent Colonel Knowlton, with a picked company of one hundred and twenty men, as a reconnoitring party, to learn the whereabouts of, and, if practicable, take the enemy's advanced guard. From near headquarters this party descended the ravine, now Audubon Park, passing along the low shore of the river to Matjte Davit's Fly, and beyond into the woods that skirted the bank west of Vanderwater Heights, so called from the

Knowlton retraced his steps to Harlem Heights by the same route he took in going out-the low, wooded shore of the river--it being more convenient and accessible than any other. He was closely pursued by Leslie with his entire command. The British afterward claimed that this movement on the part of Knowlton was a decoy. One of the Hessian officers reported, "the Americans did this intentionally to entice the pursuers deeper into the wood, where a stronger division was already concealed for their support, computed at 3,000 men." Sir Henry Clinton wrote the following marginal note in his copy of Stedman: "The ungovernable impetuosity of the light troops drew us into this scrape."

It was, indeed, a scrape. It was between ten and eleven o'clock in the forenoon when Knowlton and his rangers reached and ascended the ravine at Audubon Park-about the length of time it would take pedestrians now to tramp a similar distance through swamp, underbrush and wooded tangle --and Knowlton himself hurried to headquarters, near by, for reinforcements. Almost simultaneously one hundred of Leslie's light infantry, following close in Knowlton's trail, appeared on the high plain south of the ravine, and blew their bugle-horns, as usual after a fox chase. They had left three hundred men concealed in the bushes at the river bank. Standing on the bridge over the boulevard which connects the two divisions of Trinity Cemetery, one may readily note the depression, which was the ravine, at 157th street, and the plain on the high ground to the south of it.

Washington quickly ordered Major Leitch, with a detachment of Virginia riflemen, to join Knowlton and his rangers, and with Colonel Reed as a guide "to steal" around to the rear of the enemy by their right flank, while another detachment was to feign an attack in front. The hollowway, or ravine, through which coursed a little rivulet, was between the British troops and Washington's headquarters, near where several regiments were encamped, and seeing only a small detachment coming out to fight, they ran jubilantly down the slope to meet them and took post behind a rail fence, firing briskly. As the Americans pushed forward they left the fence, retiring up the hill. The rattle of musketry brought the reserve corps of the enemy to the rescue; and just then, by some mistake or failure to obey orders to the letter, never quite satisfactorily explained, the spirited charge of the rangers and riflemen began upon the flank of the enemy instead of the rear as intended. Both Knowlton and Leitch fell within ten minutes near each other, and within a few paces of Reed, whose horse was shot from under him. According to Aaron Burr, who was on the field with General Putnam, and must have known all the particulars,