persist. The two armies remained some time in this position observing each other. In ours, there was but one wish, that they would advance. While standing with a brother captain (Mont Blanc), we overheard a soliloquy of an old Highland gentleman, a lieutenant, who, drawing his sword, said to himself, "Come on, Maister Washington, I'm unco glad to see you; I've been offered money for my commission, but I could na think of gangin' hame without a sight of you. Come on." On the 29th the enemy made a movement, the Americans moving to the left of our position, leaving the French on our right, so that we were completely invested. On the 30th, a boat with despatches from New York arrived, having come through the French fleet in safety. In the evening of this day the army evacuated the outward position, retiring within the defences of York Town. The river is about 1500 yards wide betwixt the two posts York and Gloucester. On the 2d October, the legion under Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton was sent over to Gloucester. On the 3d, a foraging party being sent out from Gloucester by orders of Lieutenant-Colonel Dundas, the rear-guard, composed of cavalry, was attacked by the legion of Lauzun, and driven back, until saved by the light company of the 23d under Captain Champagne, who lost several men, and his Lieutenant Moore, a promising officer. Brigadier-General Choisi, commanding on the Gloucester side,

being reinforced by a body of marines, the communication with the country was cut off. At York Town our labours were incessant, the French and Americans on their side were not idle, constructing their first parallel within 600 yards of our works. They had constructed a battery of heavy guns opposite the redoubts on our right flank, and on the evening of the 9th they fired an eighteen pound ball into the town as a beginning, which, entering a wooden house where the officers of the 76th Regiment were at dinner, badly wounded the old Highland lieutenant whose soliloquy is before narrated, also slightly the quarter-master and adjutant, and killed the Commissary-General Perkins who was at table.

An incessant cannonade now commenced on both sides, but our batteries and newly constructed works soon began to feel the effects of the powerful artillery opposed to them, and on the 10th scarcely a gun could be fired from our works, fascines, stockade platforms, and earth, with guns and gun-carriages, being all pounded together into a mass. The Hon. Major Cochrane, of the legion who came express from New York through the French fleet, and was appointed to act as an aid-decamp to Lord Cornwallis, being led by zeal to fire a gun from behind the parapet in the horn work "en ricochet," and anxious to see its effect, looked over to observe it, when his head was carried off by a cannon ball.

On the 11th the enemy began his second parallel.

On the 12th Lieutenant-Colonel Dundas, Major Gordon, and part of the 80th, came over from Gloucester to do duty in the lines of York Town. On the evening of the 14th the two redoubts on our left flank were attacked, and carried after a gallant resistance; that next the river was taken by the Americans, and the other by the French. The French general who commanded the attack found fault with his aid-de-camp who led for dismounting his horse, the works being so much battered and destroyed. The two redoubts were soon included in the enemy's lines. Early in the morning of the 15th a sortie from our lines, consisting of the grenadiers of the Foot Guards, and Captain John Murray's company of the 80th, commanded by Colonel (afterwards Lord) Lake, and a detachment of Light Infantry, under Major Armstrong, in all about 350 men, under the immediate orders of Colonel (afterwards Sir Robert) Abercromby, entered the French lines in the most gallant style, killing above 100 men, and spiking 11 pieces of heavy artillery on one of their batteries almost completed. They returned without much loss, in face of a large body of troops under the Marquis Noailles sent to attack them. This daring enterprise, although it retarded operations for a short time at that particular spot, had little effect on the general progress of their siege operations, and our loss of men much increasing, the Earl took the resolution of crossing over to Gloucester with the most effect