Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 5).djvu/83

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THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1758
79

Allegheny Mountain in 1755. It is plain that Forbes intended, at this time, to march to Fort Cumberland by way of Carlisle and Bedford, and go on to Fort Duquesne over Braddock's Road. In this case he much needed Burd's road to the Youghiogheny—for the same reasons that Braddock did. There is no evidence that Forbes conceived the plan of using a new road westward from Raystown until he and Bouquet came to realize that, with that point as a rendezvous, the Fort Cumberland route would necessitate a long detour from a direct line toward Fort Duquesne.

Bouquet pushed on westward. He left Fort Lowther, at Carlisle, June 8, and was writing Forbes from Fort Loudoun on the eleventh. On the twenty-second he reached the Juniata and wrote Forbes on the twenty-eighth from his "Camp near Raes Town," which now became the rendezvous of the summer's campaign. Here Fort Bedford was built, making the most westernly fort in the chain of fortresses built through central Pennsylvania. It was one of the leading features of General Forbes's plan to extend this chain of forts all the