At last, all things were got in readiness; and the gallant little army began its toilsome march through the forest, and over the mountains, and up and down the valleys. Beside the regulars, fourteen hundred strong, it consisted of two companies of hatchet-men, or carpenters, whose business it was to go on before, and open the road; a small company of seamen, who had the care and management of the artillery; six companies of rangers, some of whom were Pennsylvanians; and two companies of light horse, which, being composed of young men taken from the very first families of Virginia, Braddock had chosen to be his body-guard: the whole numbering two thousand, or thereabouts. Owing to the difficulty of dragging the loaded wagons and heavy guns over the steep and rocky roads, the march was slow and tedious in the extreme; and what made it still more trying to Washington's patience was to see so many wagons and pack-horses loaded down with the private baggage of the English officers,--such as fine clothing, table dainties, and a hundred little troublesome conveniences, which they must needs lug about with them wherever they went. Weeks before they left Fort Cumberland, Washington had pointed out to Braddock the folly of attempting to cross that monstrous mountain barrier with a cumbrous train of wheel-carriages; and expressed the opinion, that, for the present, they had better leave the bulk of their baggage and their heaviest artillery, and, trusting entirely to pack-horses for transporting what should be needed most, make their way at once to Fort Duquesne while the garrison was yet too weak to offer any resistance. This prudent counsel, however, as usual, had failed to produce the least effect on the narrow and stubborn mind of Braddock; but by the time he had dragged his unwieldy length over two or three mountains, and had made but a few miles in many days, it began to dawn on his mind by slow degrees, that a campaign in an American wilderness was a very different thing from what it was in the cultivated regions of Europe, where nearly every meadow, field, or wood, could tell of a Christian and civilized battle there fought, and where the fine roads and bridges made the march of an army a mere holiday jaunt as compared to this rough service. The difficulties that beset him seeming to thicken around him at every step, he was at last so sorely put to it and perplexed as to be obliged to turn to the young provincial colonel for that advice which he, in his blind self-confidence, had but a short while before disdained.