[37] Orme mentions no encounter with the Indians at this place of encampment. [38] According to Orme, the first brigade encamped about three miles west of Savage River (_Orme Journal_, 335), a location which corresponds with that suggested above. This spot, furthermore, is the only advantageous ground in the vicinity. [39] Dense forests of white pine formerly covered this region, which, from the deep gloom of the summer woods and the favorable shelter that the pines gave to the Indian enemy, came to be spoken of as the "Shades of Death." The writer's party was told that the old wagoners who used to drive from Baltimore to Zanesville dreaded this locality as the darkest and gloomiest place along the entire route. Of the former gloomy forest, however, nothing now remains except the stumps. The trees were cut down years ago, sawed up, and shipped to market. [40] From Mrs. Henry Meerbach the writer secured two English pennies bearing date of 1724 and 1753 respectively, which, she said, were picked up on Braddock Road on the eastern slope of Meadow Mountain. [41] This is doubtless the bog to which Orme refers as having "been very well repaired by Sir John St. Clair's advanced party with infinite labour" (_Orme Journal_, 335). [42] This mountain, it may be noted, constitutes the dividing ridge between the waters that flow into the Atlantic and those that enter the Gulf of Mexico. [43] _Orme Journal_, 335. The Little Meadows farm at present consists of over 1200 acres. At the time the National turnpike was laid out Jesse Tomlinson owned the land at this point and kept a tavern on Braddock Road. The Tomlinson estate was, indeed, one of the objective points for the turnpike as specified in the first report of the commission appointed to lay out the National road, then uniformly known under the legal name of Cumberland Road (_Executive Document_, 9 Cong., 2 sess., Jan. 31. 1807, 16 pp.). On June 15, 1755, the entire force had reached Little Meadows, where at a council of war it was determined that General Braddock and Colonel Halket, with a detachment of the best men of the two regiments (in all about 1400, lightly encumbered), should move forward. Colonel Dunbar with the residue (about 900), and the heavy baggage, stores, and artillery, was to advance by slow and easy marches. [44] At this point it may be well to clear up an obscurity likely to arise from a confusion of the following names: Little Meadows is at the western slope of Meadow Mountain, twenty miles from Cumberland; Great Meadows, which marks the site of Fort Necessity, is about thirty-one miles farther west; Little Crossings is a ford of the Castleman River just east of Grantsville and two miles west of Little Meadows; Great Crossings is the passage of the Youghiogheny about half a mile above Somerfield and sixteen miles west of Little Crossings.