eace!" We know who these officers were from several
sources, the most authoritative and important being the documents left
by one of the party himself, Lieutenant Van Wagenen, and now in the
possession of his grandson, Mr. Gerret H. Van Wagenen, of Brooklyn.
This officer had been sent down to Philadelphia in charge of prisoners
from Canada. At this point his deposition states that "on his return
to New York he found the enemy landing upon Long Island, and being a
supernumerary he went to Long Island and offered his services to Gen'l
Sullivan, who requested him, and four other officers, namely, Robert
Troup, Edward Dunscomb, William Guilderland and Jeromus Hooghland, to
go and reconnoitre the enemy, who were observed to be in motion, and
in the various advances on the enemy, fell in with a body of horse and
infantry by whom he and his little party were made prisoners, and
continued a Prisoner for about twenty-two months." Respecting the
questioning of the officers by Clinton, there is good authority.
Lieutenants Troup and Dunscomb, who afterwards rose to the rank of
Lieutenant-colonel and Captain respectively, have daughters still
living in New York, and from their own recollections and from papers
in their possession, the account given in the text is collated. At the
time of Captain Dunscomb's death one or more letters were published by
friends who had the particulars of the incident directly from him.
(See biographical sketches of these officers, Part II.) The sending
out of officers on such duty as was required this night, was not
unusual. The British scouts who preceded the expedition to Lexington
in 1775 were officers in disguise. Similar instances during the war
could be recalled as at Brandywine. Mr. Henry Onderdonk, Jr., of
Jamaica, states, in his carefully compiled and valuable collection of
_Revolutionary Incidents on Long Island_, that the patrol was captured
under a tree east of Howard's House.]

Upon learning that the pass was unguarded, Clinton, as Howe reports,
ordered one of the light infantry battalions to occupy it, and soon
after the main column followed. It would appear, however, that he
still moved cautiously, and that the battalion, or the troops that
followed, avoided a direct approach, and reached the Jamaica Road on
the other side of the pass by a roundabout lane known as the Rockaway
Path. The innkeeper Howard was waked up, and with his son compelled
to guide the British around to the road, wher