Great rivalry sprang up between the champions of the opposite parties, who were sometimes kins-men, and often, either as friends or as foes, well known to each other. Under these circumstances challenges were sometimes given and accepted, and combats, both single and between adversaries of equal numbers, were fought: not unlike those that romance loves to dwell upon when she speaks of Roland or Almanzar, and recounts passages at arms which took place along the slopes of Roncesvalles, or encounters that happened on the plains of Alarcos. At the beginning of the year 1780, the out-posts of the American army of observation in Westchester county, had, for some time, been north of the Croton. This was the mem-

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orable "cold winter" of the revolution. The rivers and creeks about New York City, and even the harbor itself, were cov-ered with ice of unprecedented thickness, water communica-tions were suspended, and the British forces lost the security of their insular positions. It was well known that the enemy's troops, in common with the citizens, were suffering from a scarcity of provisions. The extravagant prices which the necessaries of life commanded in the British markets, furnished irresistible temptation to the farmers living in the eastern parts of Westchester, Dutchess, and Albany counties, where a very considerable part of the population was not well dis-posed toward American independence and not only loyalists but lukewarm whigs, availed themselves of every opportunity of sending cattle and provisions below. The owners or conductors of these supplies were generally accompanied by a band of well armed men, who protected the droves and guarded the sleighs filled with grain and flour. They passed along by-roads where they seldom met any but friends, through neighborhoods disaffected to the republican cause, moving for the most part rapidly and by night, halting in the obscurity of the thickest woods; and avoiding large and ready to fight with small parties of the American militia, they gen-erally proceeded in safety to their journey's end.