On the same day on which that intelligence was received by him General Washingion wrote to the Continental Congress : " I could wish " General Howe and his armament not to arrive yet, as not more than "a thousand Militia have come in, and our whole force, including the "troops at all the detached posts and on board the armed vessels, "which are comprehended in our Returns, is but small and inconsidor- " able when compared with the extensive lines they are to defend and, "most probably, the Army that he brings. I have no further intelli- "gence about him than what the Lieutenant" \Davkon, of the armed "sloop Schuyler] "mentions: but it is extremely probable his accounts "and conjectures are true," (General Washington to the President ofthe

It is not now known, if it was ever known, what the result of that early movement of the Eoyal Army would have been, had General Howe's purposes been duly executed ; but there can be little doubt that, with no more than the small force which was then under his command and with the reinforcements which an early success would have surely brought to him, from Richmond, Kings, and Queens-counties, the insufficiently armed and ill-appointed handful of half-hearted men whom General Washington commanded or endeavored to command, would have been entirely overcome; and that, thereby, the physical strength of the Rebellion would have been surely broken. 5 But " the bright designs " of God had been directed to an entirely different end ; and the uplifted hand of General Howe fell, harmlessly, without striking the meditated and well-aimed and powerful blow -- during the night, after the Fleet had anchored in Gravesend-bay, and while the preparations for landing the troops, at the approaching daybreak, were in progress, and while the soldiery, smarting under the disgrace which had befallen it, at Boston, was eagerly preparing to recover its professional respectability, in an encounter, in the field, with those by whom it had been, there, humiliated, somebody, history does not say whom although intelligent conjecture undoubtedly supplies the information, approached the commanding General with "particular information of a strong pass, upon a " ridge of craggy heights, covered with wood, that lay " in the route the Army must take, only two miles " distant from the front of the enemy's encampment " and seven from Gravesend, which the rebels would " undoubtedly occupy before the King's troops could