Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 5).djvu/89

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OLD OR NEW ROAD
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McGaws to Fort Loudon, to which place the Troops are to March, Shippensburg being much out of the Way."[1]

Bouquet reached Carlisle on the twenty-fourth of May, and wrote Forbes as follows on the day after: "I shall order Washington's Regiment to Fort Cumberland and as soon as we take post at Reas Town 300 of them must cut the Road along the Path from Fort Cumberland to Reas Town and join us."

The evident plan of Sir John St. Clair to divert Bouquet from the route he had originally outlined is disclosed further in a letter written from Winchester on May 31, in which he says: "I cannot send Colo Byrd to you as all the Cherokees have resolved never more to go to Pennsylvania, on account of the Soldiers of fort Loudon, taking up arms against them, by Capt Trent's Instigation." Under the same date, however, Bouquet wrote St. Clair and in the letter gave the order which he had preserved in form of a memorandum on the back of St. Clair's letter of May 28. Sir John, however, became more and more

  1. Cf. Historic Highways of America, vol. iv, p. 192.