ads, and amid
inspiring bursts of martial music, the steady files, with disciplined
precision, and glittering in scarlet and gold, advanced to their
position. While the rear was yet on the other side, and the van was
falling into its ordained course, the bulk of the army was drawn up in
battle array on the western shore, hard by the spot where one Frazier, a
German blacksmith in the interest of the English, had lately had his
home. Two or three hundred yards above the spot where it now stood was
the mouth of Turtle Creek--the "Tulpewi Sipu" of the Lenape--which,
flowing in a southwestwardly course to the Monongahela, that here has a
northwestward direction, embraces, in an obtuse angle of about one
hundred twenty-five degrees, the very spot where the brunt of the battle
was to be borne.

The scene is familiar to tourists, being, as the crow flies, but eight
miles from Pittsburg, and scarce twelve by the course of the river. For
three-quarters of a mile below the entrance of the creek the Monongahela
was unusually shallow, forming a gentle rapid or "ripple," and easily
fordable at almost any point. Its common level is from three to four
hundred feet below that of the surrounding country; and along its upper
banks, at the second crossing, stretches a fertile bottom of a rich
pebbled mould, about a fourth of a mile in width and twenty feet above
low-water mark. At this time it was covered by a fair, open walnut-wood,
uncumbered with bush or undergrowth.

The ascent from the river, however, is rarely abrupt; but by a
succession of gentle alluvial slopes or bottoms the steep hillsides are
approached, as though the waters had gradually subsided from their
original glory to a narrow bed at the very bottom of the ancient
channel. At this particular place the rise of the first bottom does not
exceed an angle of three degrees. Above it again rises a second bottom
of the same width and about fifty feet higher than the first, and
gradually ascending until its farther edge rests upon the bold, rocky
face of the mountain line, climbing at once some two hundred feet to the
usual level of the region around. A firm clay, overlaid with mould,
forms the soil of the second bottom, which was heavily and more densely
timbered than the first; and the underwood began to appear more
plentifully where the ground was less exposed to the action of the
spring floods. In the bosom of the hill several springs unite their
sources to give birth to a