[36] This island's aspect fifteen years later is thus described by Duke de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt: "Enfin nous sommes arrivés à King's Bridge dans l'île de New York, où le terrain, généralement mauvais, est encore en mauvais bois dans les parties les plus éloignées de la ville, et où il est cependant couvert de fermes et surtout de maisons de campagne dans les six ou sept milles qui s'en approchent davantage et dans les parties qui avoisinent la rivière du Nord et le bras de mer qui sépare cette île de Long Island." Voyage, V, 300.
[37] The convoy was carrying to England the enormous booty taken by Rodney at St. Eustatius. Eighteen of its ships were captured by La Motte-Picquet (May 2, 1781) and thus reached France instead of England.
Toward the Hessians, however, the feeling was different. Some had deserted to enlist in Lauzun's legion, but they almost immediately counterdeserted, upon which Rochambeau wrote to Lauzun: "You have done the best in deciding never to pester yourself again with Hessian deserters, of whom, you know, I never had a good opinion." Newport, December 22, 1780.
[38] July 8, 1781.
[39] April 13, 1781. (Rochambeau papers.)
[40] July 14, 1781.
[41] In June, 1867, by S.A. Green, who printed it with an English translation: My Campaigns in America, a journal kept by Count William de Deux-Ponts, Boston, 1868.
[42] The house at the entrance of the Pont-Neuf, where the Petit Dunkerque was established, being then the most famous "magasin de frivolités" in existence, survived until July, 1914. The sign of the shop, a little ship with the inscription, "Au Petit Dunkerque," was still there. It has been preserved and is now in the Carnavalet Museum.
[43] Washington's joy was in proportion to the acuteness of his anxieties; only three days before he was writing to Lafayette: "But, my dear marquis, I am distressed beyond expression to know what has become of Count de Grasse, and for fear that the English fleet, by occupying the Chesapeake, toward which, my last accounts say, they were steering, may frustrate all our prospects in that quarter.... Adieu, my dear marquis; if you get anything new from any quarter, send it, I pray you, on the spur of speed, for I am almost all impatience and anxiety." Philadelphia, September 2, 1781.
[44] September 7, 1781.