ulty in finding
officers in its own State that it had to go to New York for many of
them,--or was it that so many more rich New York Loyalists had to be
provided with commissions than the New York Loyalist brigades required
as officers?

But the most important British posts were those which guarded the
northern entrance to the island of Manhattan, where it was separated
from the mainland by Spuyten Duyvel Kill, flowing westward into the
Hudson, and the Harlem, flowing southward into the East River. King's
Bridge and the Farmers' Bridge, not far apart, joined the island to
the main; and just before the Revolution a traveller might have made
his choice of these two bridges, whether he wished to take the Boston
road or the road to Albany. In 1778 the British "barrier" was King's
Bridge, the northern one of the two, the watch-house being the tavern
at the mainland end of the bridge. Not only the bridge, but the
Hudson, the Spuyten Duyvel, and the Harlem, as well, were commanded by
British forts on the island of Manhattan. Yet there were defences
still further out. On the mainland was a line of forts extending from
the Hudson, first eastward, then southward, to the East River. Further
north, between the Albany road and the Hudson, was a camp of German
and Hessian allies, foot and horse. Northeast, on Valentine's Hill,
were the Seventy-first Highlanders. Near the mainland bank of the
Harlem were the quarters of various troops of dragoons, most of them
American Tory corps with English commanders, but one, at least, native
to the soil, not only in rank and file, but in officers also,--and
with no less dash and daring than by Tarleton, Simcoe, and the rest,
was King George III. served by Captain James De Lancey, of the county
of West Chester, with his "cowboys," officially known as the West
Chester Light Horse.

Thus the outer northern lines of the British were just above King's
Bridge. The principal camp of the Americans was far to the north. Each
army was affected by conditions that called for a wide space of
territory between the two forces, between the outer rim of the British
circle, and the inner face of the American arc. Of this space the
portion that lay bounded on the west by the Hudson, on the southeast
by Long Island Sound, and cut in two by the southward-flowing Bronx,
was the most interesting. It was called the Neutral Ground, and
neutral it was in that it had the protection of neither side, while it
was ravaged