The stray visitor who from time to time threads his devious way through the alleys and courts which surround the Block House may find himself perhaps in Fort Street, on historic ground once trodden by Washington, Forbes, Bouquet and the Indian kings of whom we have just been speaking. The echoes of the English drums, Scottish bagpipes and clash of arms have long since died away from the scarred sides of Mt. Washington and Duquesne Heights, and in their stead we hear the steam whistle and hollow reverberations from neighboring boiler shops. Hibernians and Italians inhabit the fields and the river banks where Killbuck, White Eyes, Shinghiss and Cornstalk once lit their camp-fires and held eloquent councils with Jumonville, De Ligneris and Bouquet. Squalid tenements crowd the narrow promontory where Robert de la Salle stood at the headwaters of the Ohio, in all probability the discoverer of the three rivers. The fort that Pontiac besieged has disappeared. The painted post to which the Indian tied his victim, the wigwam, the wampum belts, have vanished; the tomahawk is buried forever, though the readiness once observed among the residents of the "Point" to draw knives on each other on occasions of superhilarity may be but the survival of the good old customs which prevailed in that neighborhood more than one hundred years ago. Inspired by the suggestion of hereditary, the imaginative mind turns to the past for other instances. On any pleasant Monday morning during the spring or summer months the thrifty housekeepers in Fort Street or Point Alley, and in the shadow of the Block House itself, may be seen doing their week's washing in front of their houses. But little are they thinking of those Monday mornings in the middle of the eighteenth century when the women of the fort were escorted by bands of soldiers to the banks of the Allegheny, where laundry work was carried on under rather embarrassing circumstances. For Indians were dodging about behind trees and bushes, and dancing in full view on the opposite shore, with threatening cries, and only kept at a distance by the presence of a guard. The custom seems still to prevail on this classic ground, but do the conveniences of soap and hydrant water make up for the spice and variety that characterized the lives of colonial laundresses?