with assurances that they should be relieved in one month by the other
half. This order was executed so slowly that the forts were carried
before the militia were in the field.

Great pains had been taken, and much labour employed, to render this
position, which is naturally strong, still more secure. The principal
defences were forts Montgomery and Clinton. They had been constructed
on the western bank of the Hudson, on very high ground, extremely
difficult of access, and were separated from each other by a small
creek which runs from the mountains into the river. These forts were
too much elevated to be battered from the water, and the hills on
which they stood were too steep to be ascended by troops landing at
the foot of them. The mountains, which commence five or six miles
below them, are so high and rugged, the defiles, through which the
roads leading to them pass, so narrow, and so commanded by the heights
on both sides, that the approaches to them are extremely difficult and
dangerous.

To prevent ships from passing the forts, chevaux-de-frise had been
sunk in the river, and a boom extended from bank to bank, which was
covered with immense chains stretched at some distance in its front.
These works were defended by the guns of the forts, and by a frigate
and galleys stationed above them, capable of opposing with an equal
fire in front any force which might attack them by water from below.

Fort Independence is four or five miles below forts Montgomery and
Clinton, and on the opposite side of the river, on a high point of
land; and fort Constitution is rather more than six miles above them,
on an island near the eastern shore. Peekskill, the general head
quarters of the officer commanding at the station, is just below fort