[Illustration: Lewis’ plan of Fort Necessity: A, B, N, S, M, C. Enlarged triangle (containing “⅓ of an acre”): A, B, F. Sparks plan: A, B, L, W, K, C. Remains of Eastern embankment: O. Variation of Lewis’ triangle (given in “Fort Cumberland”): A, B, N, R, P, M, C. Actual shape of Fort Necessity according to last survey: K, C, A, B, E; the projection to the water may have been E, D, K, or E, H, K, or L, W, K. This detail is immaterial. The irregular square A, B, K, C, gives the general outline of the fortifications, CA, (save where the lane crosses it) AB, BE and O being still visible in 1901.] Relics from Fort Necessity are rare and valuable, for the reason that no other action save the one Battle of Fort Necessity ever took place here. The barrel of an old flint-lock musket, a few grape shot, a bullet mould and ladle, leaden and iron musket balls, comprise the few silent memorials of the first battle in which Saxon blood was shed west of the Allegheny Mountains. The swivels, it is said, were taken to Kentucky to do brave duty there in redeeming the “dark and bloody ground” to civilization. * * * * * But, after all--and more precious than all--our study of this historic spot in the Alleghenies and the memorials left near it becomes, soon, a study of its hero, that young Virginian Colonel. Even the battles fought hereabouts seem to have been of little real consequence, for New France fell, never to rise, with the capture of Quebec--“amid the proudest monuments of its own glory and on the very spot of its origin!” And it is not of little consequence that there was here a brave training school for the future heroes of the Revolution. For in what did Colonel Washington need training more than in the art of manoeuvring a handful of ill-equipped, discouraged men? What lesson did that youth need more than the lesson that Right becomes Might in God’s own good time? And here in these Allegheny glades we catch the most precious pictures of the lithe, keen-eyed, sober lad, who, taking his lessons of truth and uprightness from his widowed mother’s knee, his strength hardened by the power of the mountain rivers, his heart, now thrilled by the songs of the mountain birds, now tempered by a St. Piere’s hauteur, a Braddock’s blind insolence, or the prejudiced over-rulings of a Forbes, became the hero of Valley Forge and Yorktown, the immeasurable superior of Piere, Braddock, Forbes, Kaunitz or Newcastle.