The officers were in full uniform, and so, with fixed bayonets and colours flying and the drums beating the Grenadier’s March, they waded the stream. I sat in the saddle with the two aides, Captains Orme and Morris, and with the interest of a young soldier watched this fine body of men fall in with perfect discipline on the further side and disappear in their turn. This being the main body, the staff followed with the general, and I was sent back to hasten up the rangers, who had the rear. I found them about two hundred and thirty strong, moving slowly, most in hunting-shirts and fur caps and moccasins. A part were thrown out far to right and left in the woods. Ensign Allen and an officer whose name I forget appeared to be in command, and were vainly endeavouring to keep up some of the military order they had been teaching. I thought them wanting in sense and wished I had the rangers at the front. I gave my message and left them. Then I made haste to ride back to the ford, which was still held by a small guard. Here I waited, as I was ordered to do, to see the rear well over and into the woods. After crossing the ford I found that a rough road had been cleared by the French along the shore, and hurried through the woods beside the moving column to report. It was noon before we got to the second ford, above where Turtle Creek empties into the river; and, after much delay with the artillery, we got over, I think a little after one o’clock, as fine a sight as ever I saw. Here, before us, were some open meadows about a quarter-mile wide, and, twenty feet above the ford, a fair road leading upward over a little stream called Frazier’s Run, and into the woods. Very quickly, the aides carrying messages at need, the men were got into marching orders. For a full quarter of a mile there were bottom-lands in two easy rises, and beyond these the ground rose amid long grass, very dry, and thick bushes, great rocks, and trunks of fallen trees, which the garrison must have felled for fuel. Long afterwards I rode over this field and saw better the trap into which we fell. On both sides of the road, which was broad and much used, the ground rose, and here, where the wood was more dense, amid thick underwood, were ravines, some very deep and others only five or six feet. These gullies lay among great trees, pines and gum, and a tangle of grape-vines, brambles, and Indian plums. One long and deeper ravine was the bed of a little creek, and on the right of the road the ground rose quite steep. Further on, as I saw at the time, for the advance was slow, I observed that the woods seemed to show a series of low hills, and beyond them no greater rise of land to the fort, which was hid some seven miles away, at the junction of the rivers; nor did we ever have sight of it.