Thus, foot by foot,
they advanced into the waste of lonely mountains that divided the
streams flowing to the Atlantic from those flowing to the Gulf of
Mexico,--a realm of forests ancient as the world. The road was but
twelve feet wide, and the line of march often extended four miles. It
was like a thin, long party-colored snake, red, blue, and brown,
trailing slowly through the depth of leaves, creeping round inaccessible
heights, crawling over ridges, moving always in dampness and shadow, by
rivulets and waterfalls, crags and chasms, gorges and shaggy steps. In
glimpses only, through jagged boughs and flickering leaves, did this
wild primeval world reveal itself, with its dark green mountains,
flecked with the morning mist, and its distant summits pencilled in
dreamy blue. The army passed the main Alleghany, Meadow Mountain, and
Great Savage Mountain, and traversed the funereal pine-forest afterwards
called the Shades of Death. No attempt was made to interrupt their
march, though the commandant of Fort Duquesne had sent out parties for
that purpose. A few French and Indians hovered about them, now and then
scalping a straggler or inscribing filthy insults on trees; while others
fell upon the border settlements which the advance of the troops had
left defenceless. Here they were more successful, butchering about
thirty persons, chiefly women and children.
It was the eighteenth of June before the army reached a place called the
Little Meadows, less than thirty miles from Fort Cumberland.
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