Concerning this meeting Washington wrote as follows to his friend Major Francis Halket, then in Forbes’s camp at Carlisle: “I am just returned (August 2nd)[69] from a conference with Colonel Bouquet. I find him fixed, I think I may say unalterably fixed, to lead you a new way to the Ohio, through a road, every inch of which is to be cut at this advanced season, when we have scarce time left to tread the beaten track, universally confessed to be the best passage through the mountains. If Colonel Bouquet succeeds in this point with the General, all is lost,—all is lost indeed,—our enterprise will be ruined, and we shall be stopped at the Laurel Hill this winter; but not to gather laurels, except of the kind that covers the mountains. The Southern Indians will turn against us, and these colonies will be desolated by such an accession to the enemy’s strength. These must be the consequences of a miscarriage; and a miscarriage is the almost necessary consequence of our attempt to march the army by this new route. I have given my reasons at large to Colonel Bouquet. He desired that I would do so, that he might forward them to the General. Should this happen, you will be able to judge of their weight. I am uninfluenced by prejudice, having no hopes or fears but for the general good. Of this you may be assured, and that my sincere sentiments are spoken on this occasion.”
Concerning the same interview Bouquet wrote Forbes (July 31): “I have had an interview with Colonel Washington, to ascertain how he conceives the difficulties could be overcome; I got no satisfaction from it; the majority of these gentlemen do not know the difference between a party and an army, and, overlooking all difficulties, they believe everything to be easy which flatters their ideas. What I shall have to tell you on this point cannot be discussed in a letter....”
In this same letter Bouquet wrote, concerning the general situation: “You will see from the extract appended from Major Armstrong’s letters the report he makes thereupon. All seems practicable and even easy, but I put too little confidence in the observations of a young man without experience to act upon his judgement. I have therefore sent Colonel Burd, Rhor and Captain Ward to reconnoitre the Allegheny, to make an examination of all the difficulties, and thus put me into a position to decide what reliance is to be placed on the rest of the discoveries. Unfortunately they have found things very different, and this mountain which these gentlemen crossed so easily is worse than Seydeling Hill, and the ascent much longer. Considering that it was impossible to cut a waggon road on this slope without immense labour, they searched along the mountain for another pass, and found about two miles to the North a gap of which no one was aware.... It seems that, with much labour, one might make a much easier road there than the other; it remains to be seen what obstacles are still to be encountered before Loyal Hanning. Sir John has arrived, and I have communicated to him all I know on the subject; and he starts today or tomorrow morning with Colonel Burd, Rhor and 200 men to reconnoitre this gap, and the whole route as far as Loyal Hanning. He will spend 6 or 7 days on this survey, and I hope on his return you will be able to form a decision. And, in order that no time may be lost, I will make a commencement of the work if the thing is practicable without awaiting your orders. I have thought it best not to do so up to the present, in order not to lay ourselves open to public reflections if we commenced and abandoned different routes. I agree with you that you cannot take the Cumberland route untill you are in a position to demonstrate the impossibility of finding another road, or at any rate the impossibility of opening one without risking the expedition by too great an expenditure of time. We are in a cruel position, if you are reduced to a single line of communication. It is 64 miles from Cumberland to Gist, and there are only three places capable of furnishing forage sufficient for the army; the rest would not suffice for a single night. The frost, which commences at the end of October, destroys all the grass, and the rivers overflowing in the spring cut off all communication.... If we open a new route, we have not enough axes.” On the same day Forbes wrote Bouquet by the hand of Halket a decisive letter in which he said: “he [Forbes] thinks that no time should be lost in making the new Road, he has directed me to inform you that you are immediately to begin the opening of it agreeable to the manner he wrote to you in his last letter, as he sees all the advantages he can propose by going that Route, and will avoid innumerable Inconveniencys he would encounter was he to go the other, he is at the same time extremely surprised at the partial disposition that appears in those Virginia Gentlemans sentiments, as there can be no sort of comparison between the two Routes when you consider the situation of the Troops now at Reastown, & that their is not the least reason to expect that we shall meet with any difficulties but what may be easily surmounted.” On the next day but one Forbes wrote: “he [Halket] told you my opinion of the Laurell Hill road, and that I thought it ought to be sett about directly, as it is good to have two Strings to one Bow.”
On this day Washington wrote a last letter to Bouquet in behalf of the Braddock route:
“The matters, of which we spoke relative to the roads, have since our parting, been the subject of my closest reflection; and, so far am I from altering my opinion, that, the more time and attention I bestow, the more I am confirmed in it; and the reasons for taking Braddock’s road appear in a stronger point of view. To enumerate the whole of these reasons would be tedious, and to you, who are become so much master of the subject, unnecessary. I shall therefore, briefly mention a few only, which I think so obvious in themselves, that they must effectually remove objections. Several years ago the Virginians and Pennsylvanians commenced a trade with the Indians settled on the Ohio, and, to obviate the many inconveniencies of a bad road, they, after reiterated and ineffectual efforts to discover where a good one might be made, employed for the purpose several of the most intelligent Indians, who, in the course of many years’ hunting, had acquired a perfect knowledge of these mountains. The Indians, having taken the greatest pains to gain the rewards offered for this discovery, declared, that the path leading from Will’s Creek was infinitely preferable to any, that could be made at any other place. Time and experience so clearly demonstrated this truth, that the Pennsylvania traders commonly carried out their goods by Will’s Creek. Therefore, the Ohio Company, in 1753, at a considerable expense, opened the road. In 1754 the troops, whom I had the honor to command, greatly repaired it, as far as Gist’s plantation; and, in 1755, it was widened and completed by General Braddock to within six miles of Fort Duquesne. A road, that has so long been opened, and so well and so often repaired, must be much firmer and better than a new one, allowing the ground to be equally good.
“But, supposing it were practicable to make a road from Raystown quite as good as General Braddock’s,—I ask, have we time to do it? Certainly not. To surmount the difficulties to be encountered in making it over such mountains, covered with woods and rocks, would require so much time, as to blast our otherwise well-grounded hopes of striking the important stroke this season.
“The favorable accounts, that some give of the forage on the Raystown road, as being so much better than that on the other, are certainly exaggerated. It is well known, that, on both routes, the rich valleys between the mountains abound with good forage, and that those, which are stony and bushy, are destitute of it. Colonel Byrd and the engineer, who accompanied him, confirm this fact. Surely the meadows on Braddock’s road would greatly overbalance the advantage of having grass to the foot of the ridge, on the Raystown road; and all agree, that a more barren road is nowhere to be found, than that from Raystown to the inhabitants, which is likewise to be considered.
“Another principal objection made to General Braddock’s road is in regard to the waters. But these seldom swell so much, as to obstruct the passage. The Youghiogany River, which is the most rapid and soonest filled, I have crossed with a body of troops, after more than thirty days’ almost continued rain. In fine, any difficulties on this score are so trivial, that they really are not worth mentioning. The Monongahela, the largest of all these rivers, may, if necessary, easily be avoided, as Mr. Frazer the principal guide informs me, by passing a defile, and even that, he says, may be shunned.
“Again, it is said, there are many defiles on this road. I grant that there are some, but I know of none that may not be traversed; and I should be glad to be informed where a road can be had, over these mountains, not subject to the same inconvenience. The shortness of the distance between Raystown and Loyal Hanna is used as an argument against this road, which bears in it something unaccountable to me; for I must beg leave to ask, whether it requires more time, or is more difficult and expensive, to go one hundred and forty-five miles in a good road already made to our hands, than to cut one hundred miles anew, and a great part of the way over impassable mountains.
“That the old road is many miles nearer Winchester in Virginia, and Fort Frederic in Maryland, than the contemplated one, is incontestable; and I will here show the distances from Carlisle by the two routes, fixing the different stages, some of which I have from information only, but others I believe to be exact.