They arrived at the calculated time, with no other misadventure than an unfortunate experience with an American sentry, who, refusing to believe that they were friends, discharged his gun at them, thereby probably alarming the enemy. Yet the endeavor would undoubtedly have succeeded if it had not been for the cowardly behavior of the troops on two of the boats, who at the critical moment failed to land. The heroic party that did land according to programme was easily repulsed and made to retreat, sustaining a loss of fourteen killed and wounded. Among the killed was a very promising young officer, Major Ilenly, whose death was much lamented. After this affair of September 24 on Randall's Island, the first encounter of the war along the southern side of Westchester County, (here was a period of nearly three weeks during which absolutely no collision worth mentioning occurred between the American and British forces, either on Manhattan Island or in Westchester County or its waters. General Heath was not inactive, however. With keen foresight, he made a careful inspection, on the 3d of October, of the Town of Westchester and the approach to it from the neighboring peninsula of Throgg's Neck (or Frog's Neck, as if was usually called in those days). That peninsula, extending more than two miles into the Sound, was at high tide a complete island, separated from the mainland by Westchester Creek and a marsh, over which were built a plank bridge and a. causeway. At the western extremity of the bridge stood a wooden tide-mill, erected (probably in the last decadeof the seventeenth century), at his own expense, by Colonel Caleb Heathcote, first mayor of the borough Town of Westchester. At that point also a large quantity of cordwood had been piled up, which General Heath found to be "as advantageously situated to cover a post defending the pass as if constructed for the very purpose." It Avas a valuable strategic position -- a few men posted there could hold an army at bay. and, moreover, as the bridge and causeway communicated direct with the Village of Westchester, it was a very necessary precaution to have them guarded, quite irrespective of the pos-