s lines. The strength of his position was underrated, and
an assault was ordered, which was repulsed with dreadful havoc. After
four hours of desperate and fruitless fighting, Abercrombie retreated
to the landing-place, and, dismayed at the failure of the rash
assault, which had been made against the advice of his most judicious
officers, he embarked his troops and returned across the lake. While
stationed here, planning fortifications, Colonel Bradstreet was
permitted to undertake an expedition against Fort Frontenac, on the
south side of Lake Ontario, which was entirely successful.]

Operations went on slowly in that part of the year's campaign in which
Washington was immediately engaged--the expedition against Fort
Duquesne. Brigadier-general Forbes, who was commander-in-chief, was
detained at Philadelphia by those delays and cross-purposes incident
to military affairs in a new country. Colonel Bouquet, who was to
command the advanced division, took his station, with a corps of
regulars, at Raystown, in the centre of Pennsylvania. There slowly
assembled troops from various parts. Three thousand Pennsylvanians,
twelve hundred and fifty South Carolinians, and a few hundred men from
elsewhere.

Washington, in the meantime, gathered together his scattered regiment
at Winchester, some from a distance of two hundred miles, and
diligently disciplined his recruits. He had two Virginia regiments
under him, amounting, when complete, to about nineteen hundred men.
Seven hundred Indian warriors, also, came lagging into his camp, lured
by the prospect of a successful campaign.

The force thus assembling was in want of arms, tents, field-equipage,
and almost every requisite. Washington had made repeated
representations, by letter, of the destitute state of the Virginia
troops, but without avail; he was now ordered by Sir John St. Clair,
the quartermaster-general of the forces under General Forbes, to
repair to Williamsburg and lay the state of the case before the
council. He set off promptly on horseback, attended by Bishop, the
well-trained military servant who had served the late General
Braddock. It proved an eventful journey, though not in a military
point of view. In crossing a ferry of the Pamunkey, a branch of York
River, he fell in company with a Mr. Chamberlayne, who lived in the
neighborhood, and who, in the spirit of Virginian hospitality, claimed
him as a guest. It was with difficulty Washington could be prevailed