1763, July.] MARCH OF BOUQUET. 59 



He lay encamped three days to rest men and 

 animals, and then, leavmg his invalids to garrison 

 the fort, put out again into the sea of savage 

 verdure that stretched beyond. The troops and 

 convoy defiled along the road made by General 

 Forbes in 1758, if the name of road can be given 

 to a rugged track, hewn out by axemen through 

 forests and swamps and up the steep acclivities of 

 rugged mountains ; shut in between impervious 

 walls of trunks, boughs, and matted thickets, and 

 overarched by a canopy of restless leaves. With 

 difficulty and toil, the wagons dragged slowly on, 

 by hill and hollow, through brook and quagmire, 

 over roots, rocks, and stumps. Nature had formed 

 the country for a war of ambuscades and surprises, 

 and no pains were spared to guard against them. 

 A band of backwoodsmen led the way, followed 

 closely by the pioneers ; the wagons and the cattle 

 were in the centre, guarded by the regulars ; and a 

 rear guard of backwoodsmen closed the line of 

 march. Frontier riflemen scoured the woods far in 

 front and on either flank, and made surprise impos- 

 sible. Thus they toiled heavily on till the main 

 ridge of the Alleghanies, a mighty wall of green, 

 rose up before them ; and they began their zigzag 

 progress up the woody heights amid the sweltering 

 heats of July. The tongues of the panting oxen 

 hung lolling from their jaws ; w^hile the pine-trees, 

 scorching in the hot sun, diffused their resinous 



the road, and cannot on that account be employed as Flankers, I have 

 commissioned a person here to procure me about thirty woodsmen to 

 march with us. . . . This is very irregular, but the circumstances render 

 it so absolutely necessary that I hope you will approve it." 



