The withdrawal of Heath's division from Kingsbridge left the whole southern line of Westchester County denuded of defenders, except that a garrison of 600, under Colonel Lasher, was spared for Port Independence on Tetard's Hill; but even this was only a temporary measure, for, as we shall see, Colonel Lasher's small command was withdrawn from that station a few days later and joined the army at White Plains. Since the Pelham affair of the 18th, there had been absolutely no encounter between the Americans and British, even at their outlying posts, both sides having been engrossed with the business of securing position. But on the night of the 21st a well-planned and

HISTORY

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reasonably successful dash was made by an American force-- singularly enough from the very extreme of the American position, at White Plains, against the very extreme of the British position, at Mamaroneck. We have seen that during the 21st Mamaroneck was occupied by a British detachment, the Queen's Rangers, tinder Lieutenant-Colonel Rogers, while on the morning of that day the American General Stirling occupied White Plains. The Queen's Rangers was an exceedingly select body of American Loyalists, recruited in New York and Connecticut, and embraced not a few voting men of Westchester County Tory families. Later in the war they were commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe, whose memoir of them, entitled "Journal of the Operations of the Queen's Rangers," is an interesting Revolutionary authority. They were ''disciplined not for parade, but for active service. They were never to march in slow time; were directed to fire with precision and steadiness; to wield the bayonet with force and effect; to disperse and rally with rapidity. In short, in the instructions for the management of the corps, its commander seems to have anticipated the more modern tactics of the Freneh army." The sending of this body to Mamaroneck-- the home, by the way, of the distinguished Tory family of de Lancey-- was the first enterprise of the British commander apart from his main forward movement since his landing in Westchester Comity, and undoubtedly was intended as a complimentary recognition of the spirited Tory volunteers.