this route. In 3 days the Major will return to Edmund's Swamp, where there is abundant forage, and he will let me know what we must expect from Lawrell Hill. A man who has been 50 times by this path to the Ohio says that the remainder of the route after Loyal Hanny is a long series of hills, with swamps and bogs, but not of great ascent. He is a man named Fergusson, very limited, from whom one can elicit nothing precise; I have sent him with the Major and Dunnings. Upon the Major's report, we shall be sure of the route as far as Loyal Hanny; and, as regards the remainder, I am sending out Captain Patterson tomorrow with 4 men, to follow this same path to the end, and return forthwith to report, observing the bad places, and the facilities afforded by the country for obviating them, such as trees, stones, &c., the quantity of grass and water, the defiles, distances, &c. He ought to be back in 12 days at latest. Colonel Washington has had the beginning of the road cut from Braddock, [along Braddock's Road?] which I have fixed at 10 miles from Fort Cumberland. You will have been informed by the
