We are in the most beautiful island that nature could form or art improve

  From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 140.

Morale in the British ranks had never been higher. After the miseries of the winter in Boston and months of bleak isolation at Halifax, then more wearisome weeks at sea, Staten Island in summer seemed a paradise.

“[We] are in very comfortable cantonments amongst a loyal and liberal people, who produce [supply] us in plenty and in agreeable variety all the necessaries of life, most of which we have been long deprived of,” wrote a British officer. “We are in the most beautiful island that nature could form or art improve,” declared another. “Here,” reported a third, “we experience greater luxury than we have done since the commencement of hostilities…fresh meat…eggs, butter, milk, and vegetables,” and all on “reasonable terms.”

Captain Archibald Robertson hiked to the nearby hills with his painting kit to do watercolor sketches as he had at Boston. The difference here was the greater scale of everything spread before him—the sweep of the surpassing harbor defined by New York and Long Island in the distance, and the far larger British fleet now riding at anchor in the middle foreground.