St. Clair's road northward was the main thoroughfare to Fort Hamilton and Fort Jefferson from the Ohio and, though superseded by another route soon built parallel to it, was ever of importance in the burst of population from Pennsylvania and Kentucky into the Old Northwest. But the soldiers of St. Clair's successor were too superstitious to follow that ill-starred track. And, as Forbes came successfully to Fort Duquesne over a new route built parallel to Braddock's, so the second conqueror of the Old Northwest cut a new road parallel to St. Clair's. CHAPTER IV WAYNE AND FALLEN TIMBER The defeat of St. Clair's army cast a nation into gloom. As the terrible tidings sped eastward a thousand frontier cabins were filled with dismayed men, women, and children. The passion into which it is said the patient Washington was thrown, upon hearing the melancholy story, was typical of the feeling of a whole people. There could be no doubt, now, what the future would bring forth; a deluge of raiding savages, such as had never overrun the frontiers since Braddock's defeat in 1755, would certainly come; the desperate cry, "White men shall not plant corn north of the Ohio," would now ring out over the thin fringe of frightened settlements on the Miami and Muskingum, and with that cry would come frenzied raiders from whose tomahawks men would do well to escape death and women be fortunate if they were quickly killed. From all the western settlements in Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania a cry, anxious and often piteous, was hurried over the mountains to Philadelphia for aid and protection.