Page:History of Hudson County and of the Old Village of Bergen.djvu/44

36 was particularly martial about it, and it was this journal that delighted its readers with a succession of verses called "The Cow Chace" in which the Revolutionary Generals were agreeably pictured asrustics, drunkards and dunces.

"The Cow Chace" based on a raid by General Anthony Wayne on a British block house at Bull's Ferry near Hoboken, was the work of a young British officer named Major Andre. If he was a little crude in literary etiquette and a very poor poet indeed, he knew how to die as a brave and honest gentleman. He is said to have given the last canto of his epic to the editor of the Royal Gazette on the day before he left New York for his disastrous conference with Benedict Arnold at West Point. The final verses appeared in the edition that was published on the very morning when the gay, gallant young fellow was captured:

 "Yet Bergen cows still ruminate Unconscious in the stall What mighty means were used to get And lose them after all.

And now I've clos'd my epic strain I tremble as I show it, Lest this same warrior-drover, Wayne, Should ever catch the poet."