In reply to Washington's letter of the twenty-fifth Bouquet wrote: "Nothing can exceed your generous dispositions for the service. I see with the utmost satisfaction, that you are above the influences of prejudice, and ready to go heartily where reason and judgement shall direct. I wish, sincerely, that we may all entertain one and the same opinion; therefore I desire to have an interview with you at the houses built half way between our camps. I will communicate all the intelligence, which it has been in my power to collect; and, by weighing impartially the advantages and disadvantages of each route, I hope we shall be able to determine what is most eligible, and save the General trouble and loss of time."[68] Concerning this meeting Washington wrote as follows to his friend Major Francis Halket, then in Forbes's camp at Carlisle: "I am just returned (August 2^{nd})[69] from a conference with Colonel Bouquet. I find him fixed, I think I may say unalterably fixed, to lead you a new way to the Ohio, through a road, every inch of which is to be cut at this advanced season, when we have scarce time left to tread the beaten track, universally confessed to be the best passage through the mountains. If Colonel Bouquet succeeds in this point with the General, all is lost,--all is lost indeed,--our enterprise will be ruined, and we shall be stopped at the Laurel Hill this winter; but not to gather _laurels_, except of the kind that covers the mountains. The Southern Indians will turn against us, and these colonies will be desolated by such an accession to the enemy's strength. These must be the consequences of a miscarriage; and a miscarriage is the almost necessary consequence of our attempt to march the army by this new route. I have given my reasons at large to Colonel Bouquet. He desired that I would do so, that he might forward them to the General. Should this happen, you will be able to judge of their weight. I am uninfluenced by prejudice, having no hopes or fears but for the general good. Of this you may be assured, and that my sincere sentiments are spoken on this occasion." Concerning the same interview Bouquet wrote Forbes (July 31): "I have had an interview with Colonel Washington, to ascertain how he conceives the difficulties could be overcome; I got no satisfaction from it; _the majority of these gentlemen do not know the difference between a party and an army_, and, overlooking all difficulties, they believe everything to be easy which flatters their ideas. What I shall have to tell you on this point cannot be discussed in a letter...."