MILITARY MOVEMENTS IN FORESTS. 2 29 



continues to be so now, in the barren grounds of 

 Northern Canada, without any organic change of system. 

 We need hardly advert to the very serious objections 

 to which such tactics are exposed. The same system 

 was however adopted and followed by the French 

 (probably more or less upon the lines observed in 

 America a century before), during the earlier period 

 of their occupation of Algeria, but it was there found 

 so disastrous in its results, that this system (vicious 

 above all in a plains country) has since been entirely 

 given up, except at a few points where reinforcements 

 could be pushed rapidly forward, in case of need, at 

 short notice. The system of keeping considerable 

 forces together at a few important points, has in fact 

 in modern tactics, entirely superseded the old plan 

 (and very rightly so, in these days) of scattering them 

 in detachments over a wide extent of country, in a 

 chain of weak posts, each of which was liable to be 

 cut off in detail before help could reach it. 



In a great forest country, however, the movements 

 of a large force, accompanied by its necessary supplies 

 and munitions, are attended with almost insuperable 

 difficulties. We have ample evidence of that in the 

 disastrous expedition of General Braddock against the 

 French garrison of Fort Duquesne, at the confluence of 

 the Ohio and Monegahela Rivers, in 1755. * The expense 

 and toil of cutting roads through the forest ; the cross- 

 ing of streams and swamps; and transporting every- 

 thing for a great part of the way upon the backs of 

 pack horses, was found to be enormous. It was, however, 

 not on this account that this fatal expedition miscar- 

 ried, with overwhelming loss, and great military disgrace ; 



* The place was finally wrested from the French, Nov. 28, 1758. 



