Through the influence of a friend, he obtained quarters in the house of a widow. One evening, when a search party arrived, she took him down into the cellar, turned a hogshead over him and then threw half a bushel of salt on the head of the hogshead. The cellar was searched, but this simi)le stratagem saved him from capture. He eventually escaped by a canoe, landed at Fort Lee and joined the Americans by crossing the river farther up.-

In 1778-79 the season was very inclement on the heights about King's Bridge and Fordham and but a small guar^ was kept. The condition of the people and the country must have been very bad. President Dwight, in his record of his travels, comments on the trepidation of the inhabitants who lived between the lines of the two armies: " They feared everybody they saw, and loved nobody." In conversation " answers were given to please the inquirer," or if they could not please, they tried by the answer "not to provoke." Fear was the only passion which animated them; the power of volition seemed to have deserted them; they were not civil, but obsequious, not oblig-

1" History of the Morgan Horses." This fact was brought to my attention by kindness of Edward F. de Lancey, Esq. 'Simcoe's "Historj of the Queen's Bangers. "

ing but subservient ; their houses were scenes of desolation, furniture plundered or broken, the walls, floors and windows injured by violence and decay, cattle were gone and fences burnt ; the fields were covered with a rank growth of weeds and wild grass ; the world was motionless and silent, unless one of these unhappy creatures went on a rare visit to the house of a neighbor no less unhappy, or a scouting party alarmed them with expectations of new injuries and sufferings.