Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 5).djvu/156

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152
THE OLD GLADE ROAD

would have been made without my knowledge and concurrence. The breaking in upon our fair and flattering hopes of success touches me most sensibly. There are two wounded highland officers just now arrived, who give so lame an account of the matter that one can draw nothing from them, only that my friend Grant most certainly lost his wits, and by his thirst of fame brought on his own perdition, and ran great risk of ours." The brave generosity of these words is not so significant as the fact that this pain-racked man, far behind on the road, had such a grasp of the minutest detail of the whole campaign that Bouquet, he believed, would not even send out a scouting party in force without his "knowledge and concurrence."

A letter from Forbes to Bouquet dated Reastown, September 23rd, contains some interesting paragraphs: "The description of the roads is so various and disagreeable that I do not know what to think or say. Lieutenant Evans came down here the other day, and described Laurell Hill as, at present, impracticable, but he said he could mend it with the assistance of 500