In Fennimore Cooper’s interesting romance, “The Spy,” he furnishes graphic delineations of the true character of those minor operations about New York which were parts of General Clinton’s military recreation, while he had too small a force to meet Washington’s compact army in actual battle. Night forays and short excursions, under the cover of small vessels-of-war and assured of safe retreat, were of frequent occurrence. Mounted bands, officially known as the Queen’s Rangers, had very large discretion in their movements and methods. They galloped to and fro, at will, sometimes securing plunder, and sometimes barely escaping with less than they started with. As a general rule, some “spy” was on the watch, and their ventures were simply mis-adventures. The American “cow-boys” were just as real characters, although less organized; and each party carried on a small war of its own, for the plunder realized. Clinton’s lucky capture of Stony Point encouraged him to undertake other enterprises which weakened the resources of the people, without enhanced prestige to the British troops. On the first of July, Tarleton went out for twenty-four hours, and on his return, made report. He had “surprised Sheldon’s cavalry, near Salem; captured Sheldon’s colors [accidentally left in a barn], burned the Presbyterian church, and received little loss.” He says: “I proposed terms to the militia, that if they would not fire from the houses, I would not burn them.” But the militia that gathered in his rear made the expedition unprofitable. In less than eight hours Washington learned of the excursion. On the third day of July, General Tryon, under convoy of the fleet of Sir George Collier, which had escorted General Clinton to Stony Point, sailed with twenty-six hundred men for New Haven, Conn. On Sunday, July fourth, when the people were observing the Sabbath and looking forward with enthusiasm to the following morning and the observance of “Independence Day,” Tryon published the following letter to the people of Connecticut: “The ungenerous and wanton insurrections against the sovereignty of Great Britain into which this colony has been deluded by the artifices of designing men, for private purposes, might well justify in you every fear which conscious guilt could form respecting the intentions of the present movement. The existence of a single habitation on your defenceless coast, ought to be a constant reproof to your ingratitude.”