General Washington now scattered his force all along the Hudson River from the city of New York up as high as Peekskill, his camp soups giving off a flavor into Anthony’s nose. Some of the water used in cooking and drinking was dipped from the Croton River. Thus early was the Croton put into American service. At that time, we may add, the fluid was employed to qualify and reduce the whiskey; now the whiskey is thought to be weak enough to qualify and reduce the water. Ninety-three years have thus united to furnish the same number of reasons as the composing elements, contrary as they may seem to each other, for mixing the fire and water. One may judge of the extent to which the Croton is now used from the fact that during 1868, the amount of liquors retailed at the opening throat of the aqueduct cost over $150,000,000. We need not add how, during all this period, fusil-oil went down. General Washington in November following ventured over into New Jersey, and, like so many from the New York side since, was having a good time at Fort Lee, when a body of Englishmen and Handeckers came down towards them in a very rough way, and the excursionists thought it prudent to retire, leaving their provender behind them. But for these little surprises, war would lose some of its briskest features. Washington was now compelled to retreat, with numbers daily diminishing, before foes superior in numbers and constantly augmenting as they pursued. In fact, he was obliged to bridge or ford the principal rivers or streams in Northern New Jersey; thus furnishing the best precedent which the Camden and Amboy Railroad engineers have ever had for carrying people across New Jersey soil and waters in a bad temper. Newark, New Brunswick, and Princeton fell into the hands of the enemy. Some people assert that they are in them still. December 8, 1776, Washington passed over the Delaware River to cover Philadelphia, which now had much need of a lid, for it was in a terrible stew. The country lads, as these reverses pressed upon them, took a homesickness which nothing but their mothers and their own homes could cure. Only about three thousand remained, shivering and tentless, and lying near the inhospitable track of the New York and Philadelphia Railroad. Lord Cornwallis but waited for a cold night to bridge over the Delaware to enable him to take the Squire and his dwindling posse of men. Trenton was the knife-balance of American fate. Upon a nicely poised point it swung tremblingly for a weary, anxious fortnight. General Sullivan, having succeeded the waspish Lee, who was one night captured at a tavern in Baskingridge by a party more spirit-ed than his own, led, through the gloomy days of mid-December, a force of four thousand men, provided with ammunition, across the country to Washington. Timely indeed was the reinforcement; for Washington, although just made by a Congressional decree supreme manager of the war, had more need of powder than power.