At the coming of D'Estaing and the French fleet, Canonicut was garrisoned by Brown's provincial corps, and two regiments of Anspach, who were compelled to evacuate it. The French land troops then took possession of the Dumpling and Beaver Tail batteries.[282] In the year 1749 a light-house was erected on Beaver Tail.
Newport has not treasured the memory of the Hessians. They were never in favor, being about equally feared and hated. At the battle of Long Island they pinned American soldiers to the trees with their bayonets. Loaded down with arms and accoutrements, they marched and fought with equal phlegm. As foragers they were even more to be dreaded than in battle, as they usually stripped a garden or a house of its last root or crust. Brutalized by the removal of the only incentive that is honorable in the soldier, they lived or died at so much per head.
Newport as a British garrison was the resort of numbers of courtesans, many of whom had followed the army from New York. Quarrels between Hessian and British officers, growing out of their amours, were frequent. A Hessian major and captain at last fought a duel about a woman of the town, in which glorious cause the major was run through the body and killed. General Prescott then ordered all the authors of these troubles to be confined in Newport jail.
Driving in Newport is one of the duties the fashionable world owes to itself and to society. On every fine day between four in the afternoon and dusk Bellevue Avenue is thronged with equipages, equestrians, and promenaders. Nowhere in America can so many elegant turnouts be seen as here: every species of vehicle known to the wheeled vocabulary is in requisition. The cortége is not, as might be supposed, a racing mob, but a decorous-paced, well-reined procession—a sort of reunion upon wheels of all that is brilliant and fascinating in Newport society. The quiet though elegant carriages with crests on them are Bostonian; the most "stylish" horse-furniture and mettled horses are at home in Central Park: Philadelphia is self-contained, and of substantial elegance. Imagine this pageant of beautiful women and cultivated men passing and repassing, mingling and separating, smiling, saluting, admiring, and admired; the steady beat of hoofs on the hard gravel and continuous roll of wheels proceeding without intermission, until the whole becomes bewildering, confused, and indistinct, as if the whirl of wheels were indeed "in your brain."
COAST SCENE, NEWPORT.
When "The Drive" is spoken of, that through Bellevue and Ocean avenues—with, on Fort days (Wednesdays and Fridays), the détour to the fortress and so back to town—is meant. Another charming drive is by the Bath road, then skirting the beaches, to continue on through Middletown, where the hills are still blistered with the remains of Revolutionary intrenchments. Paradise and Purgatory are both reached by this road, and are within easy distance of any part of Newport.
