had crossed the river.[222] Hence perhaps it
was that, having left Fort Duquesne at eight o'clock, he spent half the
day in marching seven miles, and was more than a mile from the
fording-place when the British reached the eastern shore. The delay,
from whatever cause arising, cost him the opportunity of laying an
ambush either at the ford or in the gullies and ravines that channelled
the forest through which Braddock was now on the point of marching.

[Footnote 222: _Relation de Godefroy_, in Shea, _Bataille du
Malangueule_.]

Not far from the bank of the river, and close by the British line of
march, there was a clearing and a deserted house that had once belonged
to the trader Fraser. Washington remembered it well. It was here that he
found rest and shelter on the winter journey homeward from his mission
to Fort Le Boeuf. He was in no less need of rest at this moment; for
recent fever had so weakened him that he could hardly sit his horse.
From Fraser's house to Fort Duquesne the distance was eight miles by a
rough path, along which the troops were now beginning to move after
their halt. It ran inland for a little; then curved to the left, and
followed a course parallel to the river along the base of a line of
steep hills that here bordered the valley. These and all the country
were buried in dense and heavy forest, choked with bushes and the
carcases of fallen trees. Braddock has been charged with marching
blindly into an ambuscade; but it was not so. There was no ambuscade;
and had there been one, he would have found it. It is true that he did
not reconnoitre the woods very far in advance of the head of the column;
yet, with this exception, he made elaborate dispositions to prevent
surprise. Several guides, with six Virginian light horsemen, led the
way. Then, a musket-shot behind, came the vanguard; then three hundred
soldiers under Gage; then a large body of axemen, under Sir John
Sinclair, to open the road; then two cannon with tumbrils and
tool-wagons; and lastly the rear-guard, closing the line, while
flanking-parties ranged the woods on both sides. This was the
advance-column. The main body followed with little or no interval. The
artillery and wagons moved along the road, and the troops filed through
the woods close on either hand. Numerous flanking-parties were thrown
out a hundred yards and more to right and left; while, in the space
between them and the marching column, the pack horses and cattle, with