, the returns of wagons to be
obtained were brought in, by which it appeared that they amounted only
to twenty-five, and not all of these were in serviceable condition." On
this the General and his officers declared that the expedition was at an
end, and denounced the Ministry for sending them into a country void of
the means of transportation. Franklin remarked that it was a pity they
had not landed in Pennsylvania, where almost every farmer had his wagon.
Braddock caught eagerly at his words, and begged that he would use his
influence to enable the troops to move. Franklin went back to
Pennsylvania, issued an address to the farmers appealing to their
interest and their fears, and in a fortnight procured a hundred and
fifty wagons, with a large number of horses.[205] Braddock, grateful to
his benefactor, and enraged at everybody else, pronounced him "Almost
the only instance of ability and honesty I have known in these
provinces."[206] More wagons and more horses gradually arrived, and at
the eleventh hour the march began.

[Footnote 205: Franklin, _Autobiography. Advertisement of B. Franklin
for Wagons; Address to the Inhabitants of the Counties of York,
Lancaster, and Cumberland, Pennsylvania Archives,_II.294]

[Footnote 206: _Braddock to Robinson,5 June_,1755. The letters of
Braddock here cited are the originals in the Public Record Office]

On the tenth of May Braddock reached Wills Creek, where the whole force
was now gathered, having marched thither by detachments along the banks
of the Potomac. This old trading-station of the Ohio Company had been
transformed into a military post and named Fort Cumberland. During the
past winter the independent companies which had failed Washington in his
need had been at work here to prepare a base of operations for Braddock.
Their axes had been of more avail than their muskets. A broad wound had
been cut in the bosom of the forest, and the murdered oaks and chestnuts
turned into ramparts, barracks, and magazines. Fort Cumberland was an
enclosure of logs set upright in the ground, pierced with loopholes, and
armed with ten small cannon. It stood on a rising ground near the point
where Wills Creek joined the Potomac, and the forest girded it like a
mighty hedge, or rather like a paling of gaunt brown stems upholding a
canopy of green. All around spread illimitable woods, wrapping hill,
valley, and mountain. The spot was an oasis in a desert of leaves,--if
the name oasis can be