The reports of deserters and other uiiofficial reports made the total loss, including both British and German, from eight biindreil toa thousand men ; and it is difficult to make one believe that four hundred Americans, familiar from their childhood with the use of firearms, sheltered by ample defences from which they could fire deliberately and with their pieces rested on the tops of their defences, could have possibly fired volley after volley, into a large body of men, massed in a closely compacted column and cooped up in a narrow country roadway, without having inflicted as extended a damage on those who received their fire, as deserter after deserter, to the number of more than half a dozen, on ditl"'^rent daj'S, without any connectitin with each other, severally and separately declared had been inflicted on the enemy's advance, on the occasion now under consideration.

e Colonel Glover's letter dated " MiLE Square, October 22, 1776."

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

Brigade was immediately halted, the men were ordered to jirime and load their pieces, and the rear Regiment was ordered " to file off by the left and to " march, briskly, to reinforce the Americans, at the " pass, at the head of the creek ;" that, while the Brigade was thus halted. General Washington rode up, inquired and was informed of "the slate of things;" ordered General Heath to return, immediately, evidently with all the troops who were with him, and to have the entire Division which he commanded formed, ready for action, and to take such a position as should appear to behest adapted for holding the enemy in check, if he should attempt to effect a landing at Morrisania, which the Commander-in-chief " thought not improbable ; " and that such a disposition as was thus ordered, was promptly made of the three Brigades commanded, respectively, by Brigadier-generals Pi.rsons, iScott, and George Clinton, of whom the Division commanded by Major-general Heath was then composed.^ Indeed, notwithstanding the evident movement of the main body of the enemy, from Throgg's-neck, to the eastward, the controlling suspicion, to which we have already alluded,'' that the real intention of General Howe was to deceive General Washington and, instead of making Pell's-neck or some otlier point further to the eastward the base of his operations, to effect a landing at Morrisania; to move from that point, as his base; and to take the Americans, on the Heights of Harlem, on their left flank or on their rear, induced General Washington to do little more, during that day, [Friday, October 18,] than to watch the movements of the enemy ; to extend his line of detached parties, along the high grounds on the western bank of the Bronx-river, northward, as rapidly as the enemy should show an inclination to move, in force, in that direction ; to continue the Head-quarters of the Army on the Heights of Harlem ; and to hold the main body of that Army in constant readiness to move in whatever direction it should become necessary to confront and oppose the enemy.