ps,
offering to take command of it should it be carried into effect, as
his wounds still disabled him from duty on land. Washington, who knew
his abilities in either service was disposed to favor his proposition,
but the scheme fell through from the impossibility of sparing the
requisite number of men from the army. On the failure of the project,
he requested and obtained from Washington leave of absence from the
army for the summer, there being, he said, little prospect of an
active campaign, and his wounds unfitting him for the field.

The return of spring brought little alleviation to the sufferings of
the army at Morristown. All means of supplying its wants or recruiting
its ranks were paralyzed by the continued depreciation of the
currency. While Washington saw his forces gradually diminishing, his
solicitude was intensely excited for the safety of the Southern
States. The reader will recall the departure from New York, in the
latter part of December, of the fleet of Admiral Arbuthnot with the
army of Sir Henry Clinton, destined for the subjugation of South
Carolina.

The voyage proved long and tempestuous. The ships were dispersed.
Several fell into the hands of the Americans. One ordnance vessel
foundered. Most of the artillery horses, and all those of the cavalry
perished. The scattered ships rejoined each other about the end of
January, at Tybee Bay on Savannah River; where those that had
sustained damage were repaired as speedily as possible. The loss of
the cavalry horses was especially felt by Sir Henry. There was a corps
of two hundred and fifty dragoons, on which he depended greatly in the
kind of guerilla warfare he was likely to pursue in a country of
forests and morasses. Lieutenant-colonel Banastre Tarleton, who
commanded them, was one of those dogs of war which Sir Henry was
prepared to let slip on emergencies, to scour and maraud the country.
This "bold dragoon," so noted in Southern warfare, was about
twenty-six years of age, of a swarthy complexion, with small, black,
piercing eyes. He is described as being rather below the middle size,
square-built and strong, "with large muscular legs." Landing from the
fleet, perfectly dismounted, he repaired with his dragoons, in some of
the quartermasters' boats to Port Royal Island, on the seaboard of
South Carolina, "to collect at that place, from friends or enemies, by
money or by force, all the horses belonging to the islands in the
neighborhood."

In