greatly repaired it, as far as Gist's plantation; and, in 1755, it was widened and completed by General Braddock to within six miles of Fort Duquesne. A road, that has so long been opened, and so well and so often repaired, must be much firmer and better than a new one, allowing the ground to be equally good.
"But, supposing it were practicable to make a road from Raystown quite as good as General Braddock's,—I ask, have we time to do it? Certainly not. To surmount the difficulties to be encountered in making it over such mountains, covered with woods and rocks, would require so much time, as to blast our otherwise well-grounded hopes of striking the important stroke this season.
"The favorable accounts, that some give of the forage on the Raystown road, as being so much better than that on the other, are certainly exaggerated. It is well known, that, on both routes, the rich valleys between the mountains abound with good forage, and that those, which are stony and bushy, are destitute of it. Colonel Byrd and the engineer, who accom-
