260 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

for several days to have a hand in the approaching fight, was made quite happy by being appointed to the command on Long Island,' and on the 25th he entered upon its duties, under minute and wholesome instructions from the commander-inchief. Prominent among these were strict orders for the suppression of the prevailing looseness and laxity of morale so evident among the troops. “Shameful it is,” said Washington, “to find that those men who have come hither in defence of the rights of mankind, should turn invaders of them, by destroying the substance of their friends. . . . The distinction between a well-regulated army and a mob, is the good discipline and order of the former, and the licentious and disorderly behavior of the latter.” Gen. Sullivan, with Brig.-Gen. Lord Stirling as his second, was assigned to the command of the troops outside of the lines at Brooklyn.

This series of works (described, ante, pp. 251, 252), which extended over a mile and a half in length, and mounted twenty large and small cannon, and which was defended by ditches and felled trees, with abatis of sharpened stakes, formed simply the interior or intrenched line of defence of the American army. Its exterior line of defence, at a distance of about two miles from the intrenchments, was that furnished by the natural topographical peculiarities of the country.

In the rear of Brooklyn a series of hills, now known as the Mount Prospect range, extends northeasterly from the Narrows towards the Jamaica road at East Now York, and, in broken elevations, continues further on beyond that point. This range was, at that time, thickly covered with woods, pierced, at different points, with roads, all of which offered obvious routes for the British approach to Brooklyn. These were:

1. Martense’s Lane, extending along the southern border of the present Greenwood Cemetery, from the old Flatbush and New Utrecht road to the coast road, which ran along Gowanus Bay, on about the hue of the present Third avenue.

2. The Flatbush Pass and road, at the junction of the Brooklyn

1 Letter of Adjt.-Gen. Reed to his wife, Aug. 24: “Gen. Putnam was made happy by obtaining leave to go over. The old man was quite miserable at being kept here.”