It is a dozen miles across the narrow peninsula from the head of Delaware Bay to that of Chesapeake Bay.

Since Howe had decided to attack from the head of Chesapeake Bay there was little to prevent him from landing his army on the Delaware side of the peninsula and marching across it.

By sea it is a voyage of three hundred miles round a peninsula one hundred and fifty miles long to get from one of these points to the other, by land only a dozen miles away.

Howe made the sea voyage and spent on it three weeks when a march of a day would have saved this time and kept his fleet three hundred miles by sea nearer to New York and aid for Burgoyne.
Howe's mistakes only have their place in the procession to inevitable disaster.

Once in the thick of fighting he showed himself formidable.
When he had landed at Elkton he was fifty miles southwest of Philadelphia and between him and that place was Washington with his army.