It is undoubtedly true that the delay which was \iroduced by the halt of the Royal Army, ou the Plain, was the salvation of the American Army, within the lines; since it afforded time for strengthening the works beliind which the latter was, then, posted, and for preparing it for falling back, soon afterwards, and occupying another position, which would be more defensible and not so accessible to the King's troops. But it is scarcely true that, since the morning of the preceding day, the Americans had "drawn back their encampment " and "strengthened their Hues by additional works," to such an extent, in either instance, that "the designed "attack upon them," on the morning after the engagement, [7W«rfa(/, October 29,] need have been "deferred," for no other reasons than these, notwithstanding (ieneral Howe is re])orted to have informed the Home Government that such had been the case "' -- the reported witiidrawal of the American encamjjment was, probably, nothing more than the removal of the Stores, back, to the high grounds of Newcastle, which was commenced on that day ; " and, notwithstanding

6 Vide iMigc 252, ante. - Ibid.

^In the Jtetnrn of the Killed, Wounded, and Missing^ of the Hoyal .{riiiii, appended to General Howe's desi>atch to Lord George Germaine, dated "Nf.w-Yobk, 3 December, 1776," it was stated that the only one of either of the two Kegiinents of the Light Dragoons then in America, who was killed, from the nineteenth to the twenty-eighth of October, inclusive, was one Kauk and File, of flie Seventeenth Itegiment ; and, very probably, that one was the same to whom we have referred, in the text.