present and fit for duty, including Colonel Knox's Regiment of Artillery, was reduced to fifteen thousand, one hundred, and four;' and on the fifth of October, the same rank and file, present and fit for duty, including the Artillery, numbered only fourteen thousand, four hundred, and eighty-six, exclusive of seven skeleton Regiments of Connecticut and Rhode Island, forming two nominal Brigades, each with its full complements of Officers and Stafl', in which there were nominally twelve hundred and seventy-five men, present and fit for duty. There was, also, a body of Massachusetts Militia, " computed at four thousand, " so scattered and ignorant of the forms of Returns "that none can be got;" and a Regiment of New Hampshire Militia was posted at the White Plains and another at the Fishkills, " under the like circum- " stances." ^

While the American Army was thus made weaker, day by day, by the disaffection or the despair of the sickly, despondent, home-sick, and ill-provided-for men who composed it -- men who, iu multitudes of instances, had enlisted either from necessity, occasioned by the prevailing prostration of every kind of business, or because they had been enforced to do so, by drafts, or because it had afforded opportunities for speculation and plunder, without, in either class, the slightest pretence to a care for " the " cause of America " or to even a love of country -- the Royal Army, well-appointed and well -officered, numbered upwards of thirty thousand effective men, exclusive of those who were left for the protection of Staten Island and of those who were sick.' Indeed,