Most of the horses which brought up the train were either lost, or carried home by their owners, the nature of the country making it impossible to avoid this fatal inconvenience, the whole being a continual forest for several hundred miles without inclosures or bounds by which horses can be secured: they must be turned into the woods for their subsistance, and feed upon leaves and young shoots of trees. Many projects, such as belts, hobles, &c., were tried, but none of these were a security against the wildness of the country and the knavery of the people we were obliged to employ: by these means we lost our horses almost as fast as we could collect them, and those which remained grew very weak, so we found ourselves every day less able to undertake the extra-ordinary march we were to perform. Braddock soon appointed a Wagon Master General, and under him wagon masters, horse masters, and drovers. By his order, horses were to be mustered both morning and evening. When the men made camp, the wagons were to be drawn up in a single line along the road, with an interval between companies. The horses were then turned into the woods to feed, surrounded by a line of sentinels who were not to permit any horses to pass them. By June 16, when the first brigade reached Little Meadows, Braddock realized that the advance of his column was being retarded and his troops weakened by the number of wagons in his train.[36] Washington, who had profited from his 1754 experiences in Pennsylvania, previously had recommended that Braddock use more pack horses and fewer wagons.[37] It became obvious that wagons, while ordinarily superior to pack animals, lost this advantage if the roads were not sufficiently opened to admit their easy passage. In view of this, Braddock decided to advance from Little Meadows with a picked detachment of 1,300 men and a minimum of wagons, about 30 in number, and to leave the heavier baggage with 84 wagons in charge of Colonel Dunbar and his 850 men.[38] Prior to this re-organization at Little Meadows, four horse teams had been used in accordance with the terms of Franklin's advertisements. Now, however, the advance unit of the army marched with six horses to a wagon,[39] a change necessitated equally by the rugged terrain and the hastily constructed roads with which they were forced to contend, and by the poor condition of the horses.[40]