For Shirley had likewise been beaten back from Fort Niagara, and Johnson had not captured Fort Crown Point. Two of the campaigns of 1755 were utter failures. CHAPTER VI A DESCRIPTION OF THE BACKWOODS The clearest insight into the days when Braddock's Road was built, and the most vivid pictures of the country through which it wound its course, are given in certain letters of a British officer who accompanied Braddock. No treatise on Braddock's expedition could be in any measure complete without reproducing this amusing, interesting, yet pitiful testimony to the difficulties experienced by these first English officers to enter the backwoods of America. This is given in a volume entitled _Extracts of Letters from an officer in one of those Regiments to his friend in London_, published in London in the year of Braddock's Defeat: "You desire me to let you know the Particulars of our Expedition, and an Account at large of the Nature of the Country, and how they live here; also of the Manner of the Service, and which Corps is the most agreeable to serve in, because it has been proposed to you to strive to buy a Commission here, and that you awaited my Advice to determine. Dear Sir, I love you so well that I shall at once tell you, I reckon the Day I bought my Commission the most unhappy in my Life, excepting that in which I landed in this Country. As for the Climate, it is excessive hot in Summer, and as disagreeably cold in Winter, and there is no Comfort in the Spring; none of those Months of gentle genial Warmth, which revives all Nature, and fills every Soul with vernal Delight; far from this, the Spring here is of very few Days, for as soon as the severe Frosts go off, the Heat of the neighbouring Sun brings on Summer at once, one Day shall be Frost, and the next more scorching or sultry and faint than the hottest Dog-Day in _England_. What is excessively disagreeable here is, that the Wealth of the Country consists in Slaves, so that all one eats rises out of driving and whipping these poor Wretches; this Kind of Authority so Corrupts the Mind of the Masters, and makes them so overbearing, that they are the most troublesome Company upon Earth, which adds much to the Uncomfortableness of the Place. You cannot conceive how it strikes the Mind on the first Arrival, to have all these black Faces with grim Looks round you, instead of being served by blooming Maid Servants, or genteel white Livery Men: I was invited to Supper by a rich Planter, and the Heat of the Climate, the dim Light of the Myrtle Wax-Candles, and the Number of black half-naked Servants that attended us, made me think of the infernal Regions, and that I was at Supper with _Pluto_, only there was no beautiful _Proserpine_, for the Lady of the House was more like one of the Furies; she had passed through the Education of the College of _Newgate_, as great Numbers from thence arrive here yearly; Most being cunning Jades, some pick up foolish Planters; this Lady's Husband was