But the British officers had but very little respect for ignorant savages. Many of the warriors, disgusted with the long delay, deliberately shouldered their muskets and marched back through the wilderness to their homes. They were ready at once to respond to the invitations of the French, who ever treated them as equals. Scarvoyadi, who still personally adhered to the English, wrote to the Governor and Council of Pennsylvania, in reference to the defeat of Braddock, as follows: “As to the defeat at the Monongahela, it was owing to the pride and ignorance of that great general who came from England. He is now dead. But he was a bad man when he was alive. He looked upon us as dogs. He would never hear anything we said to him. We often endeavored to advise him, and tell him of the danger he was in. But he never appeared pleased with us. That was the reason why a great many of our warriors left him.”[47] We have no space here to allude to the great and successful campaign in the north, against Canada, with which Washington had no connection. But operations went on very slowly on the frontiers of Virginia. General Forbes, who was commander-in-chief, was long detained in Philadelphia. Colonel Bouquet, who was to command the advance, assembled his corps of British regulars at Raystown, in the heart of Pennsylvania. There were about three thousand five hundred American troops, Provincials, as they were called, at other appointed places of rendezvous. Washington summoned his two regiments of Virginia troops to meet at Winchester. They numbered about nineteen hundred men. There were also about seven hundred friendly Indians, who came into his camp, lured by the high reputation of Washington and the prospect of the plunder of Fort Duquesne. But when the American young men, from their scattered farm-houses in the wilderness, some of them distant two hundred miles, arrived at the rendezvous, they found themselves destitute of everything needful for so momentous a campaign. They were in want of horses, arms, ammunition, tents, field equipage, and almost everything else essential to the enterprise. It was necessary for Washington immediately to repair to Williamsburg, to present the state of the case to the Council. When he reached the Pamunkey river, where there was no bridge, he was carried across, with his horse, in a ferry-boat. In the crossing he chanced to meet a Virginia gentleman of the name of Chamberlain, who was wealthy and who occupied a mansion in the neighborhood, where he entertained his distinguished guests with almost baronial hospitality.