hills of Turkey Creek, near Braddock's fatal field. At midnight a booming report startled them. Were the French welcoming the long-expected reënforcements from Presque Isle and Niagara—or had a magazine exploded? In the morning some advised a delay to reconnoitre. Forbes scorned the suggestion; "I will sleep," he is said to have exclaimed, "in Fort Duquesne or in hell tonight."
At dusk that November evening the army marched breathlessly down the wide, hard trace over which Beaujeu had led his rabble toward Braddock's army and, without opposition, came at last within sight of the goal upon which the eyes of the world had been directed so long. The barracks and store-house of Fort Duquesne were burned, the fortifications blown up and the French—gone forever.
Two days later a weary man sat within an improvised house and with a feeble hand indited a letter to the British Secretary of State. And all it contained was summed up in its first words: "Pittsbourgh 27th Novemr 1758." It was Pitt's bourgh now. The region about the junction of the Alle-
