fourth, they were still there waiting for intelligence from the Indians who had been sent forward to reconnoiter. In the evening the Indians reported to General Forbes that they had discovered a thick cloud of smoke arising over the fort and extending along the Allegheny river bottom. At midnight the sentinels guarding the bivouack were startled by the dull sound of a distant explosion. An hour later the Indian scouts sent word that the French had blown up their magazine and abandoned their fort, after having burnt all the buildings and supplies. A troop of light horse, under Captain John Haslet, was immediately sent forward to extinguish the flames, if that was still possible.
In the morning the entire army moved forward, eagerly but cautiously. The commander would not allow haste for fear of running into some unknown danger. During the last three miles of the march, the army passed the scattered bodies of those who had fallen two months before, at the defeat of Grant. The route fell into a long open racepath, where the savages had been wont to pass their prisoners through the ordeal of the gauntlet. On either side, a long row of naked stakes were planted in the ground, on each of which grinned, in decaying ghastliness, the severed head of a Highlander, while beneath was exhibited his kilt. This was the Indians' way of displaying their contempt for the "petticoat warriors" who had run away at the time of Grant's rout.
The early winter dusk was stealing on when the army emerged from the leafless woods and reached the elevation where Grant had been so terribly punished. Here a short halt was ordered. Before them, on the level plain below, were the smoking ruins of the fort. Thirty chimneys rose naked above the ashes of as many houses. Not a Frenchman was to be seen. After the commands had been reformed, with flags flying, drums beating and bagpipes playing, the army marched down the elevation to the plain and onward to the fort. The southern Indians were in advance; after them Colonel Washington and Colonel Armstrong, at the head of the provincials, led the way. Of the provincials, Washington's Virginians in their hunting shirts and Indian blankets, came first; then followed the Pennsylvanians in green uniforms turned up with buff. Most of the other provincials marched in the dress, now torn and ragged, that they had worn when leaving their usual vocations; interspersed were frontiersmen dressed in buckskin with fringed hunting shirts, leggings and moccasins, and wearing coon-skin caps. Then came General Forbes, now terribly wasted,
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