How many of these, in the next place, were killed and wounded? If we are to credit certain Hessian and British accounts, as well as those of our own local historians, the battle-field on Long Island was a scene of carnage, a pen in which our men were slaughtered without mercy. The confused strife, says one writer, "is too terrible for the imagination to dwell upon." "An appalling massacre," says another, "thus closed the combat." "The forest," writes a Hessian officer, "was a scene of horror; there were certainly two thousand killed and wounded lying about." Lord Howe himself, as we have seen, "computed" that the American loss in killed and wounded alone was two thousand three hundred. But a striking commentary on this computation is not only the total omission on his part to mention how many of this very large number he buried on the field, but the important admission he makes that not more than sixty-seven wounded American officers and soldiers fell into his hands! Where were the twenty-two hundred other maimed and fallen rebels? Obviously, and as Howe must have well known, the Americans could carry few if any of their dead with them on their precipitate retreat, nor could any but the slightly hurt of the wounded make their escape. Full two thousand, by this calculation, must have been left upon the field. Who buried them? Were they the victims of the supposed frightful slaughter? Did the British general purposely give an evasive estimate to cover up the inhumanity which would thus have forever stained the glory of his victory? Far from it. That "computation" has no basis to stand upon; but, on the contrary, our loss in killed and wounded was not greater than the enemy's, but most probably less.