ge road near One Hundred and Twentieth
Street. East of the Bloomingdale and south of Harlem Heights stretched
the tract of level land called Harlem Plains.

After the retreat of the 15th, Washington's army encamped on Harlem
Heights, with their pickets lining the southern slope from Point of
Rocks to the Hudson. The British, as we have seen, lay at Bloomingdale
and across the upper part of Central Park to Horn's Hook. An enemy,
posted at the lower boundary of Harlem Plains, around McGowan's Pass,
where the ground again rises at the northern end of the Park, might be
easily observed from the Point of Rocks, and any advance from that
quarter could be reported at once. Nothing, however, could be seen of
movements made on the Bloomingdale Road or Heights, and it was in that
direction that the "Rangers" now proceeded to reconnoitre at dawn on
the 16th.

Knowlton, marching under cover of the woods, soon came upon the
enemy's pickets, somewhere, it would appear, between Hogeland's and
Apthorpe's houses on the Bloomingdale Road, more than a mile below the
American lines. This was the encampment of the Light Infantry, and
their Second and Third Battalions, supported by the Forty-second
Highlanders, were immediately pushed forward to drive back this party
of rebels who had dared to attack them on their own ground.
Anticipating some such move, Knowlton had already posted his men
behind a stone wall, and when the British advanced he met them with a
vigorous fire. His men fired eight or nine rounds a piece with good
effect, when the enemy threatened to turn his flanks, and he ordered a
retreat, which was well conducted. In this brief encounter the Rangers
lost about ten of their number, and believed that they inflicted much
more than this loss upon the Infantry.[196]

[Footnote 196: The Rangers were thus engaged in a distinct skirmish
before the main action of the day. Washington wrote to Congress early
on the 16th: "I have sent some reconnoitring parties to gain
intelligence, if possible, of the disposition of the enemy." A letter
in the _Connecticut Gazette_, reprinted in Mr. Jay's documents, and
which was probably written by Captain Brown, says: "On Monday morning
the General ordered us to go and take the enemy's advanced guard;
accordingly we set out just before day and found where they were; at
day-brake we were discovered by the enemy, who were 400 strong, and we
were 120. They marched up within six rods of us and there for