Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/87

 Rh servants, began to return. Lieutenant Hinrichs, of the Hessian chasseurs, who had received orders on the 15th of September to prevent depredations, had earned thereby the gratitude of the inhabitants. He was wounded in the skirmish of the 16th, and forced to look for quiet and good nursing. He took shelter with a widow named Oglyby (Ogilvie?) near Hornhook, on the East River, and had the satisfaction of seeing her whole family meet again after the separation caused by the perils of war. Grandfather, mother, and grandchildren, together with the black slaves and their children, met and embraced with so much affection that our good-natured lieutenant was much moved, and passed a feverish night. It is needless to say that his hosts treated him with the greatest kindness. He recovered from his wound, and from others which he afterwards received in the course of the Revolution, and died a Prussian lieutenant-general in 1834.

The city of New York had been but five days in the hands of the British when, on the night of the 20th to the 21st of September, a fire broke out in a low drinking-house near Whitehall Slip. The weather had been dry and hot. A gale was blowing from the southwest. The fire spread with frightful rapidity. The east side of Broadway was burned as far up as Exchange Place. Then, the wind having veered to the southeast, the fire crossed Broadway above Morris Street, and extended to Barclay Street, burning old Trinity Church, but sparing St. Paul's. The fire was at last mastered, mainly by the exertions of soldiers and sailors. Bancroft is positive that this fire was not the work of incendiaries. Such, however, was not the idea of the