After making a mihtary visit to the Highland posts, reconnoitring in company with Generals Heath, Clinton, and others, and directing the disposition of the various bodies of troops, he crossed the Hudson below Stony Point with a force which was to find its way to Hackensack by a pass in the Ramapo Mountains. The commander took a more direct route to Fort Lee. Arriving there on the 13th, he found that Fort Washington, which was the immediate object of his solicitude, instead of being evacuated had on the contrary been reinforced by General Greene, who had made the most of the discretionary clause in his chief's letter. Both Greene and Magaw believed that the Fort might be successfull}^ defended. Why Washington, who acknowledged that the uselessness of this post had been demonstrated and whose judgment required its evacuation, permitted the representations of his officers to outweigh his own saner conclusions has never been explained. For several days he remained in the neighbourhood, awaiting developments. Upon the 15th, two months to a day after the hurried evacuation of New York by Putnam's hard-pressed columns, Howe sent Magaw a summons to surrender. The latter answered in somewhat stilted butunequi\'ocal English that, " Actuated by the most glorious cause

1 88 The Hudson River

that mankind e\'er fought in, I am determined to defend this post to the very last extremity." Greene, across the river, dispatched a rider to Washington with tlie intelligence of Magaw's peril; and sent reinforcements to the Colonel, who was now menaced on three sides by the enemy.