hlanders in
the centre under Montgomery, their colonel, and the Royal Americans and
provincials on the right and left, under Bouquet and Washington.[664]
Thus, guided by the tap of the drum at the head of each column, they
moved slowly through the forest, over damp, fallen leaves, crisp with
frost, beneath an endless entanglement of bare gray twigs that sighed
and moaned in the bleak November wind. It was dusk when they emerged
upon the open plain and saw Fort Duquesne before them, with its
background of wintry hills beyond the Monongahela and the Alleghany.
During the last three miles they had passed the scattered bodies of
those slain two months before at the defeat of Grant; and it is said
that, as they neared the fort, the Highlanders were goaded to fury at
seeing the heads of their slaughtered comrades stuck on poles, round
which the kilts were hung derisively, in imitation of petticoats. Their
rage was vain; the enemy was gone. Only a few Indians lingered about the
place, who reported that the garrison, to the number of four or five
hundred, had retreated, some down the Ohio, some overland towards
Presquisle, and the rest, with their commander, up the Alleghany to
Venango, called by the French, Fort Machault. They had burned the
barracks and storehouses, and blown up the fortifications.

[Footnote 664: _Letter from a British Officer in the Expedition, 25 Feb.
1759, Gentleman's Magazine_, XXIX. 171.]

The first care of the victors was to provide defence and shelter for
those of their number on whom the dangerous task was to fall of keeping
what they had won. A stockade was planted around a cluster of traders'
cabins and soldiers' huts, which Forbes named Pittsburg, in honor of the
great minister. It was not till the next autumn that General Stanwix
built, hard by, the regular fortified work called Fort Pitt.[665]
Captain West, brother of Benjamin West, the painter, led a detachment of
Pennsylvanians, with Indian guides, through the forests of the
Monongahela, to search for the bones of those who had fallen under
Braddock. In the heart of the savage wood they found them in abundance,
gnawed by wolves and foxes, and covered with the dead leaves of four
successive autumns. Major Halket, of Forbes' staff, had joined the
party; and, with the help of an Indian who was in the fight, he
presently found two skeletons lying under a tree. In one of them he
recognized, by a peculiarity of the teeth, the remains of his father,