line of march; but, to
Washington's disappointment, made scarcely better speed than before,
although lightened of nearly all of the heavy baggage. "I found,"
wrote he a short time after, "that, instead of pushing on with vigor,
we were halting to level every mole-hill, and erect bridges over every
brook; by which means we were sometimes four days in getting twelve
miles." Slowly the long and straggling lines held on their weary way,
now scrambling over some rugged steep, now winding along some narrow
defile, till at length the silence of that gloomy vale--the Shades of
Death--was again broken by the shouts and uproar of a marching army.

For several days, Washington had been suffering much from fever,
attended with a racking headache, which had obliged him to travel in a
covered wagon. By the time they reached the great crossings of the
Youghiogeny, his illness had so increased, that Dr. Craik, his good
friend and physician, declared it would be almost certain death for
him to travel further; at the same time advising him to stay where he
was until his fever should somewhat abate its violence, when he could
come up with Dunbar's rear division. His brother officers also, and
even his old general, kindly urged him to give up all thought of going
on for the present; while, to render his disappointment more bearable,
some of them promised to keep him informed, by writing, of every thing
noteworthy which should happen in the course of their march. Seeing
then; was no help for it, he suffered himself to be left behind: but
it was with a sad and heavy heart that, he saw them pass on without
him; and when they had vanished, one by one, in the shadows of the
neighboring wilds, and the gleaming of their arms could no longer be
seen through the openings of the trees and bushes, he turned with a
sigh, and said to the men whom Braddock had left to nurse and guard
him, "I would not for five hundred pounds miss being at the taking of
Fort Duquesne." Here he lay for ten days; his fever, no doubt, much
aggravated by his impatience to rejoin his comrades, and the fear lest
he should not be well in time to share with them the dangers and
honors of the coming contest.

Meanwhile, Braddock pursued his slow and tedious march, and in a few
days had passed the Great Meadows, where young Washington, the year
before, as you must well remember, had learned his first lessons in
the rude art of war. A few miles beyond this, he came to a deserted