During Tuesday, the twenty-ninth of October, as we have seen, the Royal Army, " with very little al- " teration " in its position, encamped on the Plain, and awaited the arrival of reinforcements ; 3 and, notwithstanding the loss of Chatterton's-hill, in the opinion of some of the American Officers,* had made

1 In this description of the character of the American defenses, we have followed Stedman, (History of the American War, i., 213,) who was probably present, in the Royal Army.

We are not insensible that Bancroft, (Hiftory of the United Stales, original edition, ix., 180 ; the same, centenary edition, v., 444,) has so framed hiB sentence that his readers must suppose the abatis was as extended as the "HneB of entrenchments ;" but the feebleness of the Army and the scarcity of teams could not have secured so great a work, in so short a time ; neither General Washington nor General Heath nor General Knox, among the Americans, nor General Howe nor General Lord Cornwallis, among the King's troops, all of whom have more or less described the American defenses, has made the slightest allusion to such a general defense, before the long line of American entrenchments ; and Stedman expressly stated that "the point of the hill, on theenemy' a " right," [that on the lime of the Barlem Railroad, immediately northward fvm the Railroad-station,] " exceedingly steep and rocky, was covered by " a strong abatis in front of the entrenchment," the very place, as we have said in the text, where such an additional mean of defense was least needed. For these reasons, we prefer to believe that the American lines were not, generally, furnished with an abatis.