The meadows and pastures are covered with grass of a summer's growth, and thousands of bushels of apples and other fruit are rotting in the orchards. We brought otf about two hundred loads of hay and grain ; and ten times the amount might have been procured, had teams enough been provided. Those of the inhabitants of the neutral ground who were tories, have joined their friends in New York, and the Whigs have retired into the interior of our country. Some of each side have faken up arms, and become the most cruel and deadly foes. There are within the British lines banditti, consisting of lawless villains, who devote themselves to the most cruel pillage and robbery among the defenceless inhabitants between the lines ; many of whom they carry off to New York, after plundering their houses and farms. These shameless marauders have received the names of Cowboys and Skinners. By their atrocious deeds, they have become a scourge and terror to the people. Numerous instances have been related of these miscreants subjecting defenceless persons to cruel tortures, to compel them to deliver up their money, or to disclose the places where it has been secreted. It is not uncommon for them to hang a man by his neck till apparently dead, then restore him, and repeat the experiment, and leave him for dead. One of these unhappy persons informed me, that when suffering this cruel treatment, the last sensation which he recollects, when suspended by his neck, was a flashing heat over him like that which would be occasioned by boiling water poured over his body ; he was, however, cut down, and how long he remained on the ground insensible, he ki^ows not. A peaceable, unresisting Quaker, of considerable respectability, by the name of Quincy, was visited by several of these vile ruffians ; they first demanded his money, and after it was delivered they suspected he had more concealed, and inflicted on him the most savage cruelties in order to extort it from him.