206 BOUQUET IN THE INDIAN COUNTRY. fl7G4, Aug. 



season for navigating the Ohio and its branches 

 was lost. As for Virginia and Maryland, they 

 would do absolutely nothing. On the fifth of 

 August, Bouquet was at Carlisle, with his new 

 levies and such regulars as he had, chiefly the 

 veterans of Bushy Run. Before the tenth, two 

 hundred of the Pennsylvanians had deserted, shel- 

 tered, as usual, by the country people. His force, 

 even with full ranks, was too small ; and he now 

 took the responsibility of writing to Colonel Lewis, 

 of the Virginia mihtia, to send him two hundred 

 volunteers, to take the place of Jhe deserters.^ A 

 body of Virginians accordingly joined him at Fort 

 Pitt, to his great satisfaction, for he set a high 

 value on these backwoods riflemen ; but the respon- 

 sibility he had assumed proved afterwards a source 

 of extreme annoyance to him. 



The little army soon reached Fort Loudon, then 

 in a decayed and ruinous condition, like all the 

 wooden forts built during the French war. Here 

 Bouquet received the strange communication from 

 Bradstreet, informing him that he might return home 

 with his troops, as a treaty had been concluded with 

 the Delawares and Shawanoes. Bouquet's disgust 

 found vent in a letter to the commander-in-chief : 

 " I received this moment advice from Colonel Brad- 

 street. . . . The terms he gives them (the Indians) 

 are such as fill me with astonishment. . . . Had 

 Colonel Bradstreet been as well informed as I am 

 of the horrid perfidies of the Delawares and Shaw- 

 anese, whose parties as late as the 22d instant 



1 MS. Letter — Bouquet to Gage, 10 Aug. 1764. 



