and fifty of the other ranks--a total to which the flank companies of the XVIIIth contributed two private soldiers killed and four wounded,[77] while the losses of the provincials were rather less than a hundred fighting men. The news of the American success spread like wildfire throughout New England; colony after colony threw in its lot with Massachusetts, and in a few days between sixteen and twenty thousand provincials had assembled for the blockade of Boston, then garrisoned by eleven battalions, all under strength, the weakest of all being the Royal Irish, who on the 25th of June could only muster two hundred and fifty-seven of all ranks. Although there was a British fleet at anchor in the bay, Gage could do nothing until more soldiers arrived from England, and by the time the long-expected reinforcements reached him Boston was closely invested by the Americans. When the first emigrants to Massachusetts decided on the site of their principal town they selected an almost land-locked bay of the Atlantic, where there was good anchorage and shelter from the winter gales. This bay was almost bridged by two peninsulas, which from opposite shores jutted so far towards each other that at the nearest point they were only five hundred yards apart. Boston was built on the southern of these headlands; on the northern, the village of Charlestown nestled at the foot of an underfeature of the semicircle of low hills enveloping the bay. From Bunker’s Hill, as the southern end of this underfeature was called, Boston lay within cannon-shot; but neither side attempted to occupy this important position until Gage’s reinforcements arrived. Then the British General determined to seize it, but the Americans, acting either by intuition or on information from their spies in Boston, forestalled him. On the evening of the 16th of June twelve hundred men paraded on the common at Cambridge, attended a prayer-meeting, and then started on an enterprise the object of which was known only to the most senior of their officers. The column was commanded by Colonel Prescott, who had so greatly distinguished himself at the capture of Louisburg from the French during the Seven Years’ war that the home Government had offered him a commission in the regular army. Many of the men in his ranks had seen powder burned in earnest, and though their muskets were heavy and unwieldy, they had learned to use them in the pursuit of big game, where an ill-aimed bullet may cost the hunter his life. By the glimmer of dark lanterns Prescott led his men across the isthmus connecting the Charlestown peninsula with the mainland, then crossed Bunker’s Hill and halted on a lower ridge, Breed’s Hill, where he quickly traced the lines of a redoubt. To the provincials digging was no novelty, and they plied pick and shovel so silently and so assiduously that when the day broke the sailors on board the nearest man-of-war saw to their amazement an entrenchment,