The cavalcade passed on to Fort Cumberland. There Washington left the main party to follow with the baggage and hurried on ahead along Braddock's old road in order to fill an appointment to be at Gilbert Simpson's by the fifteenth. Passing through the dark tangle of Laurel known as the Shades of Death, he came on September twelfth to the opening among the mountains--the Great Meadows--where in 1754 in his rude little fort of logs, aptly named Fort Necessity, he had fought the French and had been conquered by them. He owned the spot now, for in 1770 Crawford had bought it for him for "30 Pistols[3]," Thirty years before, as an enthusiastic youth, he had called it a "charming field for an encounter"; now he spoke of it as "capable of being turned to great advantage ... a very good stand for a Tavern--much Hay may be cut here When the ground is laid down in grass & the upland, East of the Meadow, is good for grain." [3] Doubtless he meant pistoles, coins, not weapons. Not a word about the spot's old associations! The same day he pushed on through the mountains, meeting "numbers of Persons & Pack horses going in with Ginseng; & for Salt & other articles at the Markets below," and near nightfall reached on the Youghiogheny River the tract on which Gilbert Simpson, his agent, lived. He found the land poorer than he had expected and the buildings that had been erected indifferent, while the mill was in such bad condition that "little Rent, or good is to be expected from the present aspect of her," He was, in fact, unable to find a renter for the mill and let the land, twelve hundred acres, now worth millions, for only five hundred bushels of wheat! The land had cost him far more than he had received from it. Simpson had not proved a man of much energy and even had he been otherwise conditions in the region would have prevented him from accomplishing much in a financial way, for there was little or no market for farm produce near at hand and the cost of transportation over the mountains was prohibitive. During the Revolution, however, Simpson had in some way or other got hold of some paper currency and a few months before had turned over the worthless bills to Washington. A century later the package was sold at auction, and the band, which was still unbroken, bore upon it in Washington's hand: "Given by Gilbt. Simpson, 19 June, 1784." At Simpson's Washington was met by a delegation from the squatters on his holdings on Miller's Run or Chartiers Creek, "and after much conversation & attempts in them to discover all the flaws they could in my Deed &c." they announced that they would give a definite answer as to what they would do when Washington reached the land in dispute.