soners at the surrender of the fort,
November 16th. Though probably not over one hundred and fifty strong,
their losses seem to have been heavy. Knowlton fell at Harlem Heights;
Major Coburn, who succeeded him, was severely wounded a few weeks
later; Captain Nathan Hale was executed as a spy; and Captain Brown, a
man as cool as Knowlton, was killed at the defence of Fort Mifflin
near Philadelphia, in 1777, a cannon-ball severing his head from his
body. Grosvenor served through the war, retiring as Lieutenant-Colonel
commanding the Fifth of the Connecticut line. These facts are gathered
from MS. Order Books, documents in _Force_ and _Hist. Mag._, and from
MS. letter of the late Judge Oliver Burnham, of Cornwall, Conn., a
soldier in Wyllys' regiment and one of the Rangers, in which he says:
"Soon after the retreat from Long Island, Colonel Knowlton was ordered
to raise a battalion of troops from the different regiments called the
Rangers, to reconnoitre along our shores and between the armies. Being
invited by a favorite officer, I volunteered, and on the day the enemy
took New York we were at Harlem and had no share in the events of that
day."]

The ground which Knowlton reconnoitred and which became the scene of
the action remains to-day unchanged in its principal features. What
was then known as Harlem Heights is that section of the island which
rises prominently from the plain west of Eighth Avenue and north of
One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Its southern face extended from
an abrupt point, called "Point of Rocks," at One Hundred and
Twenty-sixth Street, east of Ninth Avenue, northwesterly to the
Hudson, a distance of three quarters of a mile. At the foot of these
heights lay a vale or "hollow way," through the centre of which now
runs Manhattan Street, and opposite, at distances varying from a
quarter to a third of a mile, rose another line of bluffs and slopes
parallel to Harlem Heights. This lower elevation stood mainly in the
Bloomingdale division of the city's out-ward, and is generally known
to-day as Bloomingdale Heights. In 1776 there were two farms on these
heights, owned and occupied by Adrian Hogeland and Benjamin
Vandewater, which were partly cultivated, but mainly covered with
woods. The Bloomingdale Road, as stated in a previous chapter,
terminated at Hogeland's lands about One Hundred and Eighth or Tenth
streets, and from there a lane or road ran easterly by Vandewater's
and joined the King's Brid