the Virginians, "they are so attached to that, and their Avarice to raise it, makes them neglect every Comfort of Life." As has often been said, Carlisle in Pennsylvania would have made a far better center of operations than Fort Cumberland, and eventually it proved to be Pennsylvania wagons in which the stores of the army were transported--without which the army could not have moved westward from Fort Cumberland one single mile. "Mr. Braddock had neither provisions nor carriage for a march of so considerable a length, which was greatly increased and embarrassed by his orders to take the rout of Will's Creek; which road, as it was the worst provided with provisions, more troublesome and hazardous, and much more about, than by way of Pennsylvania."[6] Not to use superlatives, it would seem that the American colonial governors and St. Clair might have presented to Braddock the difficulties of the Virginia route as compared with the Pennsylvania route early enough to have induced the latter to make Carlisle his base for the Ohio campaign; but there is no telling now where the blunder was first made; a writer in _Gentleman's Magazine_ affirmed that the expedition was "sent to _Virginia_ instead of _Pennsylvania_, to their insuperable disadvantage, merely to answer the lucerative views of a friend of the ministry, to whose share the remittances would then fall at the rate of 2-1/2 _per cent_ profit."[7] Even the suspicion of such treachery as sending Braddock to Virginia to indulge the purse of a favorite is the more revolting because of the suggestion in the letter from the Duke of Cumberland that Braddock, personally, favored an attack on Fort Niagara--which, it has been universally agreed, was the thing he should have done. "As to _your design_ of making yourself master of Niagara"--the italics are mine--wrote Cumberland; and, though he refers at the beginning to their numerous interviews, this is the sole mention throughout the letter of any opinion or plan of Braddock's. "Had General _Braddock_ made it his first business to secure the command of lake Ontario, which he might easily have done soon enough to have stopt the _force_ that was sent from _Canada_ to _Du Quesne_, that fort must have been surrendered to him upon demand; and had he gone this way to it, greater part of that vast sum might have been saved to the nation, which was expended in making a waggon road, through the woods and mountains, the way he went."[8] Yet Cumberland's orders were distinct to go to Niagara by way of Virginia and Fort Duquesne.