On the evening of the 24th they encamped on the hills around Turtle Creek, and at midnight the sentinels heard a heavy boom as if a magazine had exploded. In the morning the march was resumed. After the advance guard came Forbes, carried in a litter, the troops following in three columns, the Highlanders in the center headed by Montgomery, the Royal Americans and Provincials on the right and left under Bouquet and Washington. Slowly they made their way beneath an endless entanglement of bare branches. The Highlanders were goaded to madness by seeing as they approached the Fort the heads of their countrymen, who had fallen when Grant made his rash attack, stuck on poles, around which their plaids had been wrapped in imitation of petticoats. Foaming with rage they rushed forward, abandoning their muskets and drawing their broadswords; but their fury was in vain, for when they reached a point where the Fort should have been in sight, there was nothing between them and the hills on the opposite banks of the Monongahela and Allegheny but a mass of blackened and smouldering ruins. The enemy, after burning the barracks and storehouses, had blown up the fortifications and retreated, some down the Ohio, others overland to Presque Isle, and others up the Allegheny to Venango. There were two forts, and some idea may be formed of their size, with barracks and storehouses, from the fact that John Haslet writes to the Rev. Dr. Allison, two days after the English took possession, that there were thirty chimney stacks standing. The troops had no shelter until the first fort was built. Col. Bouquet wrote to Miss Ann Willing from Fort Duquesne, November 25th, 1758, "they have burned and destroyed to the ground their fortifications, houses and magazines, and left us no other cover than the heavens--a very cold one for an army without tents or equipages."