[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] tributed. The committee having iu charge the matter of advising as to forti-fying both banks of the Hudson in the neighborhood of the High-lands and obstructing the river navigation paved the way for equally important undertakings in that quarter. Expert commissioners who were sent to examine the country laid stress in their report upon the natural military advantages offered by the northwestern section of Westchester County, which, besides guarding the Highlands, was the eastern terminus of the King's Ferry route (at that time the principal means of communication between the Eastern andSouthern colonies), and also afforded an excellent road leading into Connecticut. The famous chain across the Hudson at Anthony's Nose was soon afterward manufactured. It is said to have cost £70,000, almost bankrupting the continental treasury, whereas no compensating ben-efits were derived from it. On tw<) occasions it broke from its own weight. The ill-fated Forts Clinton and Montgomery were con-structed in the Highlands on the west side of the river, with Fort Constitution on an island opposite West Point. The erection of Fort Lafayette at Yerplanck's Point and Fort Independence at Peekskill (as also of the famous works at Stony Point, opposite Verplanck's) FROM JANUARY, 1775, TO JULY 0, 1776 311 belongs to a later period. Of the various Revolutionary fortresses in the Highlands and that section, West Point was built last.