had nothing to do with Captain Jack's renowned company the year before. To other border fighters Braddock gave a warm reception; Gist and Croghan, the two best known men on the frontier, held important offices in the army. It is as easy as common to lay at the door of a defeated and dead commander all the misfortunes of a campaign; whatever Braddock's errors, the fact remains that the colonies failed absolutely to make the least move to provide an Indian army for Braddock's use. Nothing could have more surely promised defeat and disgrace. The flying column flew like a partridge with a broken wing. "We set out," wrote Washington who started with it but was compelled to stop, "with less than thirty carriages, including those that transported the ammunition for the howitzers, and six-pounders, and all of them strongly horsed; which was a prospect that conveyed infinite delight to my mind, though I was excessively ill at the time. But this prospect was soon clouded, and my hopes brought very low indeed, when I found, that, instead of pushing on with vigor, without regarding a little rough road, they were halting to level every mole-hill, and to erect bridges over every brook, by which means we were four days in getting twelve miles." On the third of July the flying column had passed the Youghiogheny and were encamped ten miles north of it, forty miles from Fort Duquesne. It had not averaged three miles a day since leaving Little Crossings! Here a Council of War was held to decide whether to push on alone or await the coming of Dunbar and the wagons. Could the Grenadiers and their officers have seen through that narrow path to their destination, how quickly would their decision have been made, how eagerly would they have hurried on to the Ohio! Contrecoeur at Fort Duquesne was in a miserable plight; every returning red-skin told of the advance of the great British army in the face of Governor Duquesne's proud boast to Vaudreuil that it was impossible for the English to cross the Alleghenies in sufficient force to cause uneasiness! Braddock, despite the utter lack of proper support from the colonies, was accomplishing the eighth wonder of the world. It was desperate work. But a Bull-dog was creeping nearer each day. Throughout the winter the British ministry and the Court of Versailles had been exchanging the most ridiculous pretenses of peace while secretly preparing for war with dispatch. For every ill-recruited regiment King George sent to Virginia, King Louis sent two famous regiments to Canada, and they arrived there despite Boscawen, the English admiral, who captured two unimportant ships. Yet that was enough to precipitate the struggle and save more fables from the respective ambassadors; "I will not pardon the piracies of that insolent nation," exclaimed Louis--and open war was inevitable.