should have more to do than merely to march up and down the hills, as the general had said would be all. It was May 19 when the general arrived at Fort Cumberland, and June 10 before he set out to cross the mountains, and after, as the general said, more expenditure of oaths in a month than he had needed in his whole Scotch campaign with the duke, of whom the general liked to speak. I spent much of my time while we lay at this post in learning the methods of drill and discipline, and in aiding to satisfy the Virginia recruits that it was necessary to imitate the methods of the regulars, although if it came to wood fighting I believed the English officers and men would more need to learn the ways of the rangers. Yet some who judged our people by their dislike of strict drill were of opinion that the lowness and ignorance of their officers gave little hope of their future behaviour under fire. My task of helping to train the men was given up when the general ordered me to go to Williamsburg and fetch back four thousand pounds, an errand not much to my liking. Unfortunately, the detail was made without my having the opportunity of choice, and proved very unfit, giving me much concern and anxiety. I do not know why there was delay in assembling this detail, but eight days passed after I got my order before I was given the men. I believe they would not have been eight seconds in dispersing if we had been attacked. Captain Horatio Gates, of a New York Independent company, advised not to take regulars, who would obey only their own officers; but I had no choice, and so set out and was gone a fortnight. On my return I slept every night in the waggon, with my precious money about me and pistols loaded. The men were drunken and disobedient until I promised strappado on our reaching camp, and indeed I was glad to be rid of the money and the guard. I saw during this ride and later that, as Orme had told me, the men of the Forty-fourth and Forty-eighth regiments were drunken, mutinous, and disorderly, so that it was not alone our own failures to provide which made difficult the task of our unfortunate commander. I found the general much disgusted at the delays in supplying him, and, as I thought, most unwise, and only increased his trouble by abuse of the colonies, for the more men deserve abuse the less they like it, and get sullen and less than ever inclined to help. Just before we set out from Fort Cumberland, the general being now in the saddle, Lord Fairfax presented me with a handsome pair of pistols, and said: “I should have been pleased to have had a son like you; but for that I must have had a wife, which is a calamity I have been spared. If occasion serves, I shall be glad to hear from you.” Lord Fairfax had informed me that General Braddock would ask my opinion and advice as to the use to be made of Indians and our rangers. He did consult me, but only, I believed, because his lordship had desired him to do so.