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. The wheel-tracks were grown over and obliterated, and the venerable chaplain of a New England regiment, afterwards president of Yale College, said that their condition reminded him of the Song of Deborah: "In the days of Shamgar and Jael the highways were unoccupied and the travelers walked in the by-paths. The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel."^

Though this territory was in the hands of the enemy, its people and residents still hid their representation in what was then the County Legislature, or County Committee, as shown by the following interesting document :

"King Street, February y« 12, 1777. " A Number of the Freeholders and Inhabitants of Westchester County having appeared at the Court House on the 16th April, 1776, in consequence of Notice given for that Purpose by the Committee of tlie said County, chose the Persons hereafter named to serve as a Committee for the said County from the •2'"> Monday in May, 1776, to the 2'"i Monday in May, 1777 -- any twenty whereof to be a Quorum, viz' :