" As Colonel Drake's Regiment of Minute-men "consists of one hundred and eleven private men, " present, and yet have no less than four Field "Officers, two Captains, and thirteen other Commis- "sioned Officers, and twenty Non-commissioned " Officers, it is unreasonable to put the Continent to "the enormous expense of maintaining so many " Officers for the use of so few men ; and it is there- " fore ordered that one Field-officer, two Captains, •' four Lieutenants, two Ensigns, the Adjutant, and ■' Quartermaster, eight Sergeants, eight Corporals, or " Drums or Fifes, and no other Officer do remain with " that small part of the Regiment ; the other Officers " are to return to their County, in order to complete " their Corps. Colonel Swartwout ' and Lieuteuant- " colonel Humphreys • are to observe the same rule in "proportion to their numbers; and they are all of " them to send into Headquarters, Returns of their " respective Corps, present." 9

The reader will become better acquainted with this portion of the history of Colonel Samuel Drake's Regiment of Westchester-county Minute-men, byand-by.

The Regiment, when it reached the City of New- York, was employed in the construction of a redoubt, on Hoern's Hook, at the mouth of the Harlem-river, for the defence of the pass of Hell-Gate as well as to command the ferry to Long Island, which, even at that early period, had been established at that place ; 10

»i Captain Gray's Company probably marched from Bedford, on the sixteenth of February, agreeably to the promise that it should do so ; and on the twenty-ninth of the same month, General Lee said of the Regiment and of a Company detached from another Regiment, together forming the garrison at Hoern's Hook, " Drake's Regiment of Minute- " Men and one more Company, (in all about two hundred,) are stationed at "Horn's Hook, which commands Hell-Gate.