Lafayette started from Peekskill immediately upon the departure of M. de Tully’s ships, taking with him twelve hundred light infantry, made up of New England and New Jersey troops. He reached Pompton, New Jersey, on the twenty-fifth day of February; Philadelphia, on the second day of March, and Head of Elk, on the next day. If the reader will imagine Lafayette as standing upon the high ground overlooking Chesapeake Bay on the evening of March 3, 1781, let him recall Maxwell’s visit to the same spot accompanied by Lafayette, on the third day of September, 1777, just before the Battle of Brandywine. On the former occasion, Lafayette slept in a log cabin where he had been watching the British landing. At daybreak, that cabin was within the British picket-lines. A suspicion that it was occupied by an officer of Lafayette’s rank was certainly beyond the conception of the Hessian Chasseurs who bivouacked close by. In a letter written by Lafayette, to his young wife, which was ever cherished by the late Senators Oscar and Edmond Lafayette, grandsons of the Marquis, he humorously contrasts his condition at the two dates. “The landing of Cornwallis, at this particular point” is noticed; then, “my first wound, in my first battle near Birmingham Meeting House”; and then, “my present independent command, and my hopeful expectation that the same British General will not much longer bar the way to American Independence.” From this point, Lafayette sent his advance troops to Annapolis; but he first made a personal trip, in an open canoe, to Elizabethtown, to accelerate preparations for the capture of the traitor Arnold. He visited Baron Steuben at Yorktown, and learned that the Baron would undertake to raise five thousand militia for his support. He visited Muhlenburg at Suffolk; and then made a personal reconnoissance of Arnold’s defences at Portsmouth. The return of M. de Tully to Newport compelled him to return to Annapolis and there await instructions from Washington. Meanwhile, Washington, following up his own letters to Rochambeau, visited Newport, R.I., and accompanied Rochambeau to the French Admiral’s ship. Eleven hundred men had already embarked, awaiting the repair of a frigate before sailing. On the eighth, four frigates and eight battleships proceeded to sea. This was a profound surprise to the British fleet, still anchored in Gardiner’s Bay, as well as to Clinton, then in New York. The French fleet was actually under weigh before Admiral Arbuthnot suspected its design. He sailed promptly in pursuit, with an equal force, and wrote to General Clinton, to “warn Arnold of his danger.” On the sixteenth, the British and French squadrons fought a well-balanced battle, off the Chesapeake; but the presence of the British fleet having thwarted the chief object of its errand, Monsieur Destouches returned to Newport on the twenty-sixth, after an absence of only eighteen days. The inability of the French fleet to control the