General Heath "immediately ordered Colonel Prescott, the hero of Bunker Hill, with his regiment, and CaptainLieutenant Bryant, of the artillery, with a three-pounder, to reenforce the riflemen at Westchester causeway, and Colonel Graham, of the New York line, with his regiment, and Lieutenant Jackson, of the artillery, with a six-pounder, to re-enforce at the head of the creek; all of which was promptly done/' These forces, insignificant though they were in comparison with what Howe could have hurled against them, proved sufficient. He did not care to take the hazard of forcing either pass; and from the 12th to the ISth of October he remained ridiculously penned up on Throgg's Neck by a contemptible few of the starveling continentals who up to that melancholy hour had fled terror-stricken before his ferocious grenadiers. Indeed, his whole programme of entering Westchester ( •ounty by way of Throgg's Neck had to be abandoned finally; and he was obliged, after six days1 delay, to put his army on boats and ship it across Eastchester Bay to Pelham (or Rodman's) Point, a locality not cut off from the main by creeks and marshes and strategic passes.

The responsibility for the selection of Throgg's Neck as theof Britthe ish lauding place has been charged to the commander fleet, Admiral Lord Howe, General Howe's brother; and in explanation of the choice of that locality it has been urged that a direct lauding on Pell's Neck would have been an imprudent measure because of the shallowness of the water at the latter place, preventing the co-operation of any vessel of sufficient battery to cover the landing. But whatever share of the responsibility may be shifted to Admiral Howe, General Howe at least offered no objection to Throgg's Neck, and indeed he subsequently justified its selection. "Four or five days," he said in a speech before an investigating committee of the House of Commons in 1770, " had