Before the battle of Long Island, in .\ugust, 1776, the New York Con\'ention sent delegates to stir up the veomanr\' along the river. As the enemy's ships w^ere at anchor near Tarrytown, powder and ball w^ere sent to that place. Colonel Hammond, of local celebrity, w^as actively engaged in organising the militia for defence; Colonel Pierre Van Cortlandt, of the Croton manor of that name, was an active and efficient guardian of the east shore of the Tappan Zee ; while Colonel

The Spirit of '76 327 Hay kept guard with his regiment over the western shore, from Nyaek to the Highlands, the centre of his operations being at Haverstraw. The yeomen on both sides of the river patrohed the shores even as they guarded the highwa3's, and tradition asserts that wives and daughters stood beside the men as they shouldered the flint-lock guns and handled powder-horns and bullet-pouches. Whenever the foe might ap])car, rustic marksmen were ready to re-enact Lexington and Concord. The British war-ships, shifting ground occasionally with the tide, or to avoid the galling attentions of the sharjvshooters, that annoyed them like so many wasps, were not holding their ground in the Tappan Zee and Haverstraw^ Bay from ain}^ holida\' motive. Their boats were out constantlv making soundings, locating shoals, determining the course of the channel, and preparing charts for the service of the flotilla. The Tories alongshore w^ere suspected of furnishing both provisions and information. A tender beat u]3 from Ha\^erstraw Bay nearh^ to Fort Montgomery in the Highlands, when General Clinton greeted the unwelcome visitor with a ball from a 32-pounder, that had the effect of sending her about in short order. But soundings and observations had been completed, and the chart of the river was sufflcientlv accurate to enable the war-shi]3s to move up without other peril than that encountered from the American