126 Life of Coimt Rumford. 



the 4th inst., by his Majesty's frigate Blond, since arrived 

 here, off Cape Fear, with a favorable wind for Charleston. 



" On Sunday last arrived his Majesty's Ship Rotterdam, 

 James Knowles, Esq., commander, which sailed from Charles- 

 ton the same day the Blond left it. Colonel Thompson, of the 

 King's American Dragoons, late Under-Secretary of State for 

 the American Department, and a number of gentlemen of rank, 

 who came passengers in the above-mentioned ship, remain at 

 Charleston." 



Rivington, January 19, 1782. "We are informed that 

 Lord Dunmore had a grand reception at Charleston, on his 

 arrival there." 



Supposing Thompson to have arrived in Charleston 

 on or before January i, we might infer that he did not 

 leave England until after the news had arrived there 

 of Cornwallis's surrender, if Curwen had not written of 

 him as absent on the same date referred to in the extract 

 given above from Wraxall. At any rate, Thompson 

 must have learned at once, as he landed on this conti- 

 nent, that the war waging here by Great Britain was 

 rather a defensive than an offensive one. 



Tarleton, in his History of the Campaigns of 1780 

 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces, does not come far 

 enough down to cover his presence. In the autumn of 

 1781 the remnant of the British army in the South had 

 been driven by Greene into Charleston, South Carolina. 

 There, and at Savannah and on John's Island, the only 

 places in the region left in their possession, and these 

 too held by the aid of vessels, the British forces were 

 hemmed in and found it difficult to hold their ground. 

 Their discomfiture had rallied the hopes of the patriots. 

 Hundreds of halting, time-serving waiters on the for- 

 tunes of the war, within the former British lines, now 

 put themselves under the protection of the Legislature 



