His force consisted of provincials from Pennsylvania, Virginia,
Maryland, and North Carolina, with twelve hundred Highlanders of
Montgomery's regiment and a detachment of Royal Americans, amounting in
all, with wagoners and camp followers, to between six and seven thousand
men. The Royal American regiment was a new corps raised, in the
colonies, largely from among the Germans of Pennsylvania. Its officers
were from Europe; and conspicuous among them was Lieutenant-Colonel
Henry Bouquet, a brave and accomplished Swiss, who commanded one of the
four battalions of which the regiment was composed. Early in July he was
encamped with the advance-guard at the hamlet of Raystown, now the town
of Bedford, among the eastern heights of the Alleghanies. Here his tents
were pitched in an opening of the forest by the banks of a small stream;
and Virginians in hunting-shirts, Highlanders in kilt and plaid, and
Royal Americans in regulation scarlet, labored at throwing up
intrenchments and palisades, while around stood the silent mountains in
their mantles of green.
Now rose the question whether the army should proceed in a direct course
to Fort Duquesne, hewing a new road through the forest, or march
thirty-four miles to Fort Cumberland, and thence follow the road made by
Braddock. It was the interest of Pennsylvania that Forbes should choose
the former route, and of Virginia that he should choose the latter.
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