The way was direct and short, but would lead them
through a difficult country and a defile so perilous that Braddock
resolved to ford the Monongahela to avoid this danger, and then ford it
again to reach his destination.
Fort Duquesne stood on the point of land where the Alleghany and the
Monongahela join to form the Ohio, and where now stands Pittsburg, with
its swarming population, its restless industries, the clang of its
forges, and its chimneys vomiting foul smoke into the face of heaven. At
that early day a white flag fluttering over a cluster of palisades and
embankments betokened the first intrusion of civilized men upon a scene
which, a few months before, breathed the repose of a virgin wilderness,
voiceless but for the lapping of waves upon the pebbles, or the note of
some lonely bird. But now the sleep of ages was broken, and bugle and
drum told the astonished forest that its doom was pronounced and its
days numbered. The fort was a compact little work, solidly built and
strong, compared with others on the continent. It was a square of four
bastions, with the water close on two sides, and the other two protected
by ravelins, ditch, glacis, and covered way. The ramparts on these sides
were of squared logs, filled in with earth, and ten feet or more thick.
The two water sides were enclosed by a massive stockade of upright logs,
twelve feet high, mortised together and loopholed.
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