"I am sending you a letter I have received from Major Armstrong. By the report of the two guides he sent out it seems the thing is very practicable; in an affair of so much consequence as this I thought I ought to act with greatest caution. While the waggoner returned today with an escort to reconnoitre how the road could be laid so as to avoid all the detours and windings of the path; and I have asked Colonel Burd to go with Rhor tomorrow to the top of the mountain (Allegheny) to determine the straightest line from here to the foot of the ascent, and to mark the turnings of the road to reach the top. I hope you will be here on their return, and could then judge if it would be well to risk this route. In 3 days the Major will return to Edmund's Swamp, where there is abundant forage, and he will let me know what we must expect from Lawrell Hill. A man who has been 50 times by this path to the Ohio says that the remainder of the route after Loyal Hanny is a long series of hills, with swamps and bogs, but not of great ascent. He is a man named Fergusson, very limited, from whom one can elicit nothing precise; I have sent him with the Major and Dunnings. Upon the Major's report, we shall be sure of the route as far as Loyal Hanny; and, as regards the remainder, I am sending out Captain Patterson tomorrow with 4 men, to follow this same path to the end, and return forthwith to report, observing the bad places, and the facilities afforded by the country for obviating them, such as trees, stones, &c., the quantity of grass and water, the defiles, distances, &c. He ought to be back in 12 days at latest. Colonel Washington has had the beginning of the road cut from Braddock, [along Braddock's Road?] which I have fixed at 10 miles from Fort Cumberland. You will have been informed by the guides I sent you of the advantages of this route which is open, and needs very little in the way of repair; its drawbacks consist in the want of forage, its length, its defiles, and the crossing of rivers. Colonel Washington, who is animated with sincere zeal to contribute to the success of this expedition, and is ready to march wheresoever you may decide, writes me that, from all he has heard and from all the information he has been able to collect, our route is impracticable even for packhorses, so bad are the mountains, and that the Braddock road is the only one to take &c. "There, my dear General, you have in brief the reports and opinions which have reached me; I will add no reflection of my own, hoping to see you every day. Do you not think it would be well to see Colonel Washington here, before making your decision? and if our parties continue to send favourable news, to convert him to give way to the evidence?"