In 1759 Colonel Burd visited the site of Fort Necessity. This was only five years after it was built. He described its remains as circular in shape. If it was originally a triangle it is improbable that it could have appeared round five years later. If, however, it was originally an irregular square it is not improbable that the rains and frosts of five winters, combined with the demolition of the Fort by the French, would have given the mounds a circular appearance. Was Fort Necessity, then, built in the form of an irregular square? There is the best of evidence that it was. In 1830--fourteen years after Mr. Lewis’ “survey,”--Mr. Jared Sparks, a careful historian and author of the standard work on Washington, visited Fort Necessity. According to him its remains occupied “an irregular square, the dimensions of which were about one hundred feet on each side.” Mr. Sparks drew a map of the embankments which is incorporated in his “Writings of Washington.” This drawing has not been reproduced in any later work, the authors of both “History of Cumberland” and “Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania” preferring to reproduce Mr. Lewis’ inconsistent survey and speculation rather than the drawing of what Mr. Sparks, himself, saw. It is plain that Mr. Sparks found the embankment B E running in the direction it does today and not at all in direction of the line B C as Mr. Lewis drew it. By giving the approximate length of the sides as one hundred feet, Mr. Sparks gives about the exact length of the line B E in whatever direction it is extended to the brook. The fact that such an exact scholar as Mr. Sparks does not mention a sign or tradition of an embankment at B C, only fourteen years after Mr. Lewis “surveyed” it, is evidence that it never existed which cannot come far from convicting the latter of a positive intention to speculate. Mr. Sparks gives us four sides for Fort Necessity. Three of these have been described as C A, A B and the broken line B E D. Is there any evidence of the fourth side such as indicated by the line C D? There is. When Mr. Fazenbaker first questioned the accuracy of the map of Fort Necessity in “Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania,” he believed the fort was a four sided construction and pointed to a small mound, indicated at O, as the remains of the fourth embankment. The mound would not be noticed in a hasty view of the field but, on examination proves to be an artificial, not a natural, mound. It is in lower ground and nearer the old course of the brook than the remains of Fort Necessity. A mound here would suffer most when the brook was out of banks, which would account for its disappearance. [Illustration: Western embankment of Fort Necessity marked with a line of white stones.] [Illustration: Remains of the Southern embankment of Fort Necessity. The low ground covered with rank grass, on the right, marks the rifle-pit. In the distance is the Eastern sweep of Great Meadows.]