Besides beginning to build ovens in the vicinity of Staten Island, he had a large camp marked out there and much fuel collected, lie caused the Westchester County roads leading down to Kingsbridge to be cleared by pioneers, as if preliminary to a march in that direction, lie also adopted the familiar ruse of misleading dispatches, which were intrusted to ingenious scouts, who fell in with parties of the enemy and after desperate pretended efforts to escape were taken and reluctantly gave up their valuable papers. On the 19th of August Washington began the great movement which was to terminate in the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown and the utter paralysis of Great Britain's armed power in the American States.
All being in readiness for breaking camp, he dispatched Hazen's regiment and the New Jersey line across the Hudson at Dobbs Ferry, with orders to make a feint toward Staten Island, and, drawing up the main body of the American army, he had it paraded facing New York. Then he had the troops turned about and marched with all speed up the river road, by way of Tarrytown, Sing Sing, and the new bridge across the Oroton, to Verplanck's Point. The French followed by the circuitous route of White Plains, North Castle, Pine's Bridge, and Crompond. "The inhabitants of the country," says the Abbe Robin, " were greatly surprised to see us returning by the same road, so poor, and the Tories, with a malicious sneer, demanded if we were going to rest from our labors/' By the 2Cth both armies had completed their movement across King'?.
Ferry. The advance through the eastern part of New Jersey was made so as to have it appear that Staten Island was menaced. Sir Henry Clinton suspected nothing of the truth until Washington was well advanced toward Philadelphia.