A tour around New York, and My summer acre; being the recreations of MrFelix Oldboy . ill, now Mount Morris, in the park of thatname. These were the fortifications mapped out bythe engineers ; but besides these there were earthworkserected to command every place at which a landingcould be effected and intended as a protection forlight field-pieces. The whole river-front bristled withthe preparations for war, and in my boyhood thetraces of the works were plainly visible at Turtle Bay,at Horns Hook—then a beautifully shaded, grassy dell,and still retaining many of its old characteristics—andon t
A tour around New York, and My summer acre; being the recreations of MrFelix Oldboy . ill, now Mount Morris, in the park of thatname. These were the fortifications mapped out bythe engineers ; but besides these there were earthworkserected to command every place at which a landingcould be effected and intended as a protection forlight field-pieces. The whole river-front bristled withthe preparations for war, and in my boyhood thetraces of the works were plainly visible at Turtle Bay,at Horns Hook—then a beautifully shaded, grassy dell,and still retaining many of its old characteristics—andon the rocky and well-wooded bluffs that lay the British took possession of the island, by descent on Turtle Bay and Horns Hook,they found that the works which the Americans haderected were excellently adapted to their own defence,and they occupied and strengthened them. They hadfound out their value by experiment; for on the night MV SUMMER ACRE 395 after the battle of Long Island a forty-gun ship thathad passed the lower batteries and sought anchorage. in Turtle Bayhad been hull-ed by round-shot from a field battery upon the high bank at Street, and had been compelled to seek shelter ihthe channel east of Blackwells Island. As a boy I can vividly recall the picturesqueness ofthe small rock-bound cove of the East River knownas Turtle Bay. The banks, which were high and pre-cipitous, afforded a safe and snug harbor for smallvessels. Here, in the year before the Declaration ofIndependence was signed, the British authorities hadmade a magazine of military stores, and these the 396 MV SUMMER ACRE Sons of Liberty, whose names are on New Yorksroll of patriotic honor, determined to seize. Theyknew the ground well, and laid their plans so as to in-sure success. Under the direction of John Lamb andMarinus Willett, a chosen band of twenty secured asloop at a Connecticut village on the Sound, sweptdown stealthily through the perilous channels of
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectnewyorknybuildingsst
