=Source.=--_Gentleman’s Magazine._ Vol. li., p. 539.
_Whitehall._--By Sir H. Clinton’s letter to Lord G. Germaine, dated off
Chesapeak, October 29, and brought by the _Rattlesnake_ sloop, capt.
Melcombe, it appears that “the fleet and army, which sailed from the
Hook on the 19th, arrived off Cape Charles on the 24th, when they had
the mortification to hear that lord Cornwallis had proposed terms of
capitulation to the enemy on the 18th. This intelligence was brought by
the pilot of the _Charon_, and some other persons who came off from
the shore, and said they had made their escape from York on the 18th,
and had not heard any firing there since the day before. The _Nymph_
frigate also arriving from New-York, says the General, brought me a
letter from his lordship, dated the 15th, the desponding tenor of which
gives me the most alarming apprehensions of its truth.
Since then we have been plying off the Capes, with variable and hard
gales of wind, to the present hour, without being able to procure any
further information, except from two men taken in a Canoe, whose report
exactly corresponds with the former.
Comparing, therefore, the intelligence given by those people, and
several others since come in, with the purport of lord Cornwallis’s
letter, a copy of which I have the honour to inclose for your
lordship’s information; we cannot entertain the least doubt of his
lordship’s having capitulated, and that we are unfortunately too late
to relieve him; which being the only object of the expedition, the
admiral has determined upon returning with his fleet to Sandy Hook.
I beg leave to mention to your lordship, that the army is under the
greatest obligations to the admirals, the captains, and the officers
of the king’s ships, for the cheerfulness with which they submitted to
many and great inconveniences for our accommodation on this service.”
The Dispatches from admiral Graves were to the same effect as the above
from Sir H. Clinton.
The terms of capitulation have not yet officially been received.