good, serviceable soldiers in spite of the miserable system under which they served, and they sprang, armed, from the soil whenever a pressing occasion presented itself. It was the militia and the levies that enabled the commanding general to throw reinforcements into the scale of battle when his little army of regulars was hard pressed. They were to the British always an unknown quantity, and set calcula- tions at naught. When Gates needed a larger force of men to oppose to Burgoyne, Clinton sent him the farmer-soldiers of Ulster County — men of mingled Dutch and German blood — to complete the auxiliary force. On the sole occasion upon which the war-ships of the British penetrated the Highlands and for a short time controlled the whole of the navigable part of the Hudson in 1777, their commander held in his hands the destiny of America. Had Sir Henry Clinton succeeded in establishing a Digitized by Microsoft® 4o8 The Hudson River conjunction with Burgoyne, or in hemming Gates be- tween the force he had brought to bay at Saratoga and the victorious army from the south, the wisest general- ship and the most hardy valour would hardly have sufficed to save the American cause. Even with the foregone defeat of Burgoyne, Clinton must have retired with deep regret, for he could not have been blind to the supreme importance of retain- ing the mastery that had been won by his expedition against the forts. From a military standpoint, that expedition, though brilliant in execution, was product- ive of no permanent results. Yet it would have been worth almost any effort or sacrifice to have held the river. Granting the numerical superiority of the Americans on shore, it does not seem impossible that a man of greater genius than Sir Henry Clinton might have maintained an effectual blockade with his fleet upon the river. Upon the military road of which the Newburgh ferry was so important a feature, not only troops, but waggon-trains and artillery were continually being moved. Most of the material for carrying on the war came through New England, her ports being the only ones then available and was transported by way of Fishkill and Newburgh, and so back of the Highlands on the west shore, and southward. When, on the 4th of April, 1782, Washington finally established his headquarters in the famous old house that Jonathan Hasbrouck built in 1750, the battle of Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® The Fisher's Reach 411 Yorktown had been fought and the tidings of the sur- render of Cornwalhs had been received by Lord North " as a bullet in his heart." Rochambeau was now left in command in New Jersey, and the chief settled him- self with the army at Newburgh for those last weary months of waiting for the definite establishment of peace. Should the enemy again become actively en- gaged, the importance of retaining control of the Hud- son would not be less than formerly. The Commander was accompanied by his wife and military family, and lived at Newburgh till the latter part of the succeeding year. The old house, which is in an excellent state of preservation and is used as a repository for military relics, is upon a little plateau commanding a comprehensive view of the river, par- ticularly where it flows between the towering hills that form the northern gateway of the Highlands. The cottage has six rooms, besides the hall and kitchen. From the small piazza or " stoop" upon the east, the entrance is into a large room, to which six other doors furnish ingress, while the one small window affords a subdued light. There is, on the south side of this room, a noble fireplace, where an ox might have been roasted whole. The visitor, standing upon the hearth, can see the sky through the chimney-top. The walls of the house are of stone, two feet thick, and the hewn rafters are of savoury cedar. Knox, Greene, Wayne, Hamilton, Steuben, Morris- how the ghosts gather about that old table and train Digitized by Microsoft® 412 The Hudson River their soldier wit to gallantry while the wife of their chief presides over the tea urn, or gravely discuss, after her retirement, the matters that have pre-emi- nency in American history. It was while living at Newburgh that Washington narrowly escaped capture by an envoy of Sir Henry Clinton — at least, so the legend runs. A man named Ettrick lived with his daughter in a secluded valley to the south of head- quarters ; a place known as the Vale of Avoca. It was at the head of a long, narrow bay, but though only a short distance, as the bird flies, from the Hasbrouck cottage, it could only be