pliant tact rarely seen in the born
Briton, took great pains to please these troublesome allies, and went so
far as to adopt one of them as his son.[651] A considerable number
joined the army; but they nearly all went off when the stock of presents
provided for them was exhausted.

[Footnote 650: The above extracts are from the _Bouquet and Haldimand
Papers_, British Museum.]

[Footnote 651: _Bouquet to Forbes, 3 June, 1758._]

Forbes was in total ignorance of the strength and movements of the
enemy. The Indians reported their numbers to be at least equal to his
own; but nothing could be learned from them with certainty, by reason of
their inveterate habit of lying. Several scouting-parties of whites were
therefore sent forward, of which the most successful was that of a young
Virginian officer, accompanied by a sergeant and five Indians. At a
little distance from the French fort, the Indians stopped to paint
themselves and practise incantations. The chief warrior of the party
then took certain charms from an otter-skin bag and tied them about the
necks of the other Indians. On that of the officer he hung the
otter-skin itself; while to the sergeant he gave a small packet of paint
from the same mystic receptacle. "He told us," reports the officer,
"that none of us could be shot, for those things would turn the balls
from us; and then shook hands with us, and told us to go and fight like
men." Thus armed against fate, they mounted the high ground afterwards
called Grant's Hill, where, covered by trees and bushes, they had a good
view of the fort, and saw plainly that the reports of the French force
were greatly exaggerated.[652]

[Footnote 652: _Journal of a Reconnoitring Party, Aug. 1758._ The writer
seems to have been Ensign Chew, of Washington's regiment.]

Meanwhile Bouquet's men pushed on the heavy work of road-making up the
main range of the Alleghanies, and, what proved far worse, the parallel
mountain ridge of Laurel Hill, hewing, digging, blasting, laying
fascines and gabions to support the track along the sides of steep
declivities, or worming their way like moles through the jungle of swamp
and forest. Forbes described the country to Pitt as an "immense
uninhabited wilderness, overgrown everywhere with trees and brushwood,
so that nowhere can one see twenty yards." In truth, as far as eye or
mind could reach, a prodigious forest vegetation spread its impervious
canopy over hill, valley, and plain, and wra