In his letter to the President of the Congress, dated "Head-quarters, " White-Plains, 25 October, 1776," Colonel Robert H. Harrison, General Washington's Secretary, stated that "about two o'clock this afternoon, " intelligence waB brought to Head-quarters, that three or four detach- " ments of the enemy were on their murch, and had advanced within ' ' about four miles of this place. It has been fully confirmed, since, by "a variety of persons, who have been out to reconnoitre."

If General Clinton did not make a mistake in the date of his letter, of which we have no evidence, the movement of the Royal Army was commenced on Thursday, [October 24;] and the letter of Colonel Harrison clearly indicated that it had already reached Scarsdale, within four miles of the Plains, before the movement was known at Head- quarters, at two o'clock in the afternoon of the following day, [Friday, October 25.]

The failure of General Washington to obtain information of the movements of the King's troops, of which so many instances have been seen, was nowhere more evident than in the instance now under consideration- -one of the reasonable results of the outrages to which the inhabitants had been subjected, by both the Congresses and the Committees, on the one hand, and by the unrestrained thieves, among both the Officers and the Privates of the Army whom General Washington commanded, on the other.

1 "General Howe thought it necessary to proceed with great circum- " spection. The progress was slow ; the march of the Army, close ; the " encampments, compact and well-guarded with artillery ; and the most "soldier-like caution used, in every respect."-- (Annual Register for 1776: History of Europe, *177.)