r the Alleghenies along the old trail of the Monongahela
against Fort Duquesne. Of Braddock, the least said the better. A
gambler, full of arrogant contempt towards all people and things that
were not British, hail-fellow-well-met to his boon companions,
heartless towards all outside the pale of his own pride, a blustering
bully yet dogged, and withal a gentleman after the standard of the age,
he was neither better nor worse than the times in which he lived. Of
Braddock's men, fifteen hundred were British regulars, the rest
Virginian bushfighters; and the redcoat troops held such contempt
towards the buckskin frontiersmen that friction arose from the first
about the relative rank of regulars and provincials. From the time
they set out, the troops had been retarded by countless delays. There
was trouble buying up supplies of beef cattle {228} among the
frontiersmen. Scouts scoured the country for horses and wagons to haul
the great guns and heavy artillery. Braddock's high mightiness would
take no advice from colonials about single-file march on a bush trail
and swift raids to elude ambushed foes. Everything proceeded slowly,
ponderously, with the system and routine of an English guardroom.
Scouts to the fore and on both flanks, three hundred bushwhackers went
ahead widening the bridle path to a twelve-foot road for the wagons;
and along this road moved the troops, five and six abreast, the red
coats agleam through the forest foliage, drums rolling, flags flying,
steps keeping time as if on parade, Braddock and his officers mounted
on spirited horses, the heavy artillery and supply wagons lagging far
behind in a winding line.

[Illustration: A SKETCH OF THE FIELD OF BATTLE AT BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT]

What happened has been told times without number in story and history.
It was what the despised colonials feared and any bushranger could have
predicted. July 9, in stifling heat, the marchers had come to a loop
in the Monongahela River. Braddock thought to avoid the loop by
fording twice. He was now within eight miles of Fort Duquesne--the
modern Pittsburg. Though Indian raiders had scalped some wanderers
from the trail and insolent messages had been occasionally found
scrawled in French on birch trees, not a Frenchman had been seen on the
march. The advance guard had crossed the second ford about midday when
the road makers at a little opening beyond the river saw a white man
clothed in buckskin, but wearing an of