was so rugged that many wagons were entirely demolished and more temporarily disabled; when off this track in the ravines they were buried axle deep in the bogs.
To haul the wagons and cannon over this worst road ever trod Braddock had the poorest horses available. All the weak, spavined, wind-broken, and crippled beasts in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia were palmed off on Braddock by unscrupulous contractors. And horses, dead or dying, were always left with the demolished wagons. "There has been vile management in regard to horses," wrote Washington; before the army had covered one third of its journey there were not enough to draw all the wagons, the strongest being sent back each day to bring up the wagons left behind the morning before. The continuous diet of salt meat brought an epidemic of bloody flux on the army; some died, many were sick. Washington's strong system was in the grasp of a fever before Little Crossings was reached.
The situation now was desperate and would have appalled a less stubborn man than Edward Braddock. Acting on Wash-
