Forbes from his sick bed at Raystown wrote to Bouquet: "Your description
of the road pierces me to the very soul." And a few days later to Pitt:
"I am in the greatest distress, occasioned by rains unusual at this
season, which have rendered the clay roads absolutely impracticable. If
the weather does not favor, I shall be absolutely locked up in the
mountains. I cannot form any judgment how I am to extricate myself as
everything depends on the weather, which snows and rains frightfully."
There was no improvement. In the next week he writes to Bouquet: "These
four days of constant rain have completely ruined the road. The wagons
would cut it up more in an hour than we could repair in a week. I have
written to General Abercromby, but have not had one scrape of a pen from
him since the beginning of September; so it looks as if we were either
forgot or left to our fate."[663] Wasted and tortured by disease, the
perplexed commander was forced to burden himself with a multitude of
details which would else have been neglected, and to do the work of
commissary and quartermaster as well as general. "My time," he writes,
"is disagreeably spent between business and medicine."
[Footnote 663: _Forbes to Bouquet, 15 Oct. 1758. Ibid., 25 Oct. 1758.
Forbes to Pitt, 20 Oct. 1758._]
In the beginning of November he was carried to Loyalhannon, where the
whole army was then gathered. There was a council of officers, and they
resolved to attempt nothing more that season; but, a few days later,
three prisoners were brought in who reported the defenceless condition
of the French, on which Forbes gave orders to advance again.
Pages:
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712