et wide, and the line of march often extended four miles. It
was like a thin, long party-colored snake, red, blue, and brown,
trailing slowly through the depth of leaves, creeping round inaccessible
heights, crawling over ridges, moving always in dampness and shadow, by
rivulets and waterfalls, crags and chasms, gorges and shaggy steps. In
glimpses only, through jagged boughs and flickering leaves, did this
wild primeval world reveal itself, with its dark green mountains,
flecked with the morning mist, and its distant summits pencilled in
dreamy blue. The army passed the main Alleghany, Meadow Mountain, and
Great Savage Mountain, and traversed the funereal pine-forest afterwards
called the Shades of Death. No attempt was made to interrupt their
march, though the commandant of Fort Duquesne had sent out parties for
that purpose. A few French and Indians hovered about them, now and then
scalping a straggler or inscribing filthy insults on trees; while others
fell upon the border settlements which the advance of the troops had
left defenceless. Here they were more successful, butchering about
thirty persons, chiefly women and children.

It was the eighteenth of June before the army reached a place called the
Little Meadows, less than thirty miles from Fort Cumberland. Fever and
dysentery among the men, and the weakness and worthlessness of many of
the horses, joined to the extreme difficulty of the road, so retarded
them that they could move scarcely more than three miles a day. Braddock
consulted with Washington, who advised him to leave the heavy baggage
to follow as it could, and push forward with a body of chosen troops.
This counsel was given in view of a report that five hundred regulars
were on the way to reinforce Fort Duquesne. It was adopted. Colonel
Dunbar was left to command the rear division, whose powers of movement
were now reduced to the lowest point. The advance corps, consisting of
about twelve hundred soldiers, besides officers and drivers, began its
march on the nineteenth with such artillery as was thought
indispensable, thirty wagons, and a large number of packhorses. "The
prospect," writes Washington to his brother, "conveyed infinite delight
to my mind, though I was excessively ill at the time. But this prospect
was soon clouded, and my hopes brought very low indeed when I found
that, instead of pushing on with vigor without regarding a little rough
road, they were halting to level every mole-hill, a