nental army, was dispatched by Washington to New York in the latter part of January, 177G, with instructions to put the place " in the best posture of defense the season and circumstances will admit of." In his march through Westchester County he caused numerous dwellings to bo entered and searched for arms, which ho appropriated and bore away with him for the good of the cause. Dawson pathetically observes that this was indeed a heavy and melancholy visitation of fate upon the wretched farmers of the Boston Post Road, who thus, only a few weeks after being pillaged by the cowardly banditti from Connecticut, were forced to submit to a similar diabolical outrage by an infamous military despot. Lee, establishing himself in New York, entered upon a very energetic regime. Skilled in military science, he constructed defenses which would undoubtedly have proved of considerable utility if the city had been held to resist a siege. One of these defenses, a redoubt on Hoern's Hook, at the mouth of the Harlem River, commanding the Hellgate pass aud also the Long Island ferry, was erected by Colonel Samuel Drake's regiment of Westchester County minute men, a body of one hundred and eleven privates and numerous officers. Of this organization it is recorded in an official document that it possessed, when summoned into active duty, no fewer than " four field officers, two captains, thirteen other commissioned officers, and twenty non-commissioned officers " -- a most ridiculous state of things, about which Dawson makes merry as illustrating the abominable propensity to office-holding among the so-called " friends of Liberty " in Westchester County. General Lee ordered a rigorous reduction of the staff, and directed the eliminated officers to "return to their county, in order complete corps," which were as deficient in numbers as theto list of theirtheir commanders was enormous.