This story has a strongly apocrA^phal flavour. From Fort Lee the Chief saw the greater part of the attack upon Fort Washington and his spirits were alternately raised and depressed by the varying fortunes of the fray. The battle commenced about noon, with General Kn3^phausen's division attacking from the north, General Mathew advancing from the Harlem Ri\^er and Lord Percy trying to force the lines gallantly held by Colonel Cadwalader, two miles and a half south of the fort. Much of the action was hidden from the watcher across the river by intervening hills and woods, but the gallant defence made by Cadwalader s eight hundred Pennsylvanians against double their number of English and Hessians was in open view. Eagerly the Chief directed his glass to that quarter.

iQO The Hudson River

Nothing [says Irving] encouraged him more than the gallant style in which Cadwalader with an inferior force maintained his position. When he saw him, however, assailed in flank, the line broken and his troops, overpowered by numbers, retreating to the fort, he gave up the game as lost. The worst sight of all was to behold his men cut down and bayoneted by the Hessians while begging quarter. It is said so completely to have overcome him that he wept "with the tenderness of a child."

By the hands of a daring messenger Washington managed to get a note to Magaw, telling him that if he could hold out till night, he would then endeavour to bring off the garrison. The messenger was one Captain Gooch, of Boston, whose intrepidity reminds one of some mighty deed from the sagas. General Heath is authority for the following account of his adventure :