Page:History of Hudson County and of the Old Village of Bergen.djvu/42

34 could be got no further than this place and Hoebuck, and as there is but one house at each of these places, many were obliged to lie in the open, whose distress when I walked out at daybreak gave me a livelier idea of the horror of war than anything I ever met with before. About 8 a. m, 3 large ships came to sail and made towards the Hook. They raked the place with grape and killed one horse. On the night of the 17th, the garrison tried to burn the ships which had anchored 3 miles above. They grappled the Renown of 50 guns but failed. She cannonaded us again later. Colonel Duyckinck this morning retired to Bergen leaving Colonel Durkee on the Hook with 300 men." After three days' cannonading by ships, the Americans withdrew and thereafter the British held Paulus Hook. Bergen remained the headquarters of the American forces till it too was evacuated.

The British were not permitted to hold even the Hook undisturbed. American parties made daring raids again and again, the most famous of these being known as the Battle of Paulus Hook. On the night of August 19, 1779, Major Lee (the celebrated Light Horse Harry of Revolutionary annals) brought his men across the Hackensack and through enemy territory along a perilous causeway through the swamps, falling on the British so suddenly and fiercely that he was able to carry back with him 7 officers and 100 privates.

The loyalist New York Gazette of August 28, 1780, said: "General Washington, the Marquis de la Fayette, Generals Greene and Wayne with many other Officers and a large body of Rebels have been in the vicinity of Bergen for some days past. They have taken all the forage from the Inhabitants of