What a march was that! The darkness was intense. The path, Washington wrote, was “scarce broad enough for one man.” Now and then it was lost completely and a quarter of an hour was wasted in finding it. Stones and roots impeded the way, and were made trebly treacherous by the torrents of rain which fell. The men struck the trees. They fell over each other. They slipped from the narrow track and slid downward through the soaking, leafy carpet of the forest.
Enthusiastic tourists make the journey today from Great Meadows to the summit of Laurel Hill on the track over which Washington and his hundred men floundered and stumbled that wet May night a century and a half ago. It is a hard walk but exceedingly fruitful to one of imaginative vision. From Great Meadows the trail holds fast to the height of ground until Braddock’s Run is crossed near “Braddock’s Grave.” Picture that little group of men floundering down into this mountain stream, swollen by the heavy rain, in the utter darkness of that night! From Braddock’s Run the trail begins its long climb on the sides of the foothills, by picturesque Peddler’s Rocks, to the top of Laurel Hill, two thousand feet above.
Washington left Great Meadows about eight o’clock. It was not until sunrise that Half King’s sentries at “Washington’s Spring” saw the vanguard file out on the narrow ridge, which, dividing headwaters of Great Meadow Run and Cheat river, makes an easy ascent to the summit of the mountain. The march of five miles had been accomplished, with great difficulty, in a little less than ten hours—at the rate of one mile in two hours!
Forgetting all else for the moment, consider the young leader of the floundering, stumbling army. There is not another episode in all Washington’s long, eventful life that shows more clearly his strength of personal determination and daring. Beside this all-night march from Great Meadows to Washington’s Spring, Wolfe’s ascent to the Plains of Abraham at Quebec was a pastime. A man in full daylight today can walk over Washington’s five-mile course to Laurel Hill in one-fifth of the time that little army needed on that black night. If a more difficult ten-hour night march has been made in the history of warfare in America, who led it and where was it made? No feature of the campaign shows more clearly the unmatched, irresistible energy of this twenty-two-year-old boy. For those to whom Washington, the man, is “unknown,” there are lessons in this little path today, of value far beyond their cost.
Whether Washington intended to attack the French before he reached Half King, is not known; at the spring a conference was held and it was immediately decided to attack. Washington did not know and could not have known that Jumonville was an ambassador. The action of the French in approaching Great Meadows and then withdrawing and hiding was not the behavior of an embassy. Half King and his Indians were of opinion that the French party entertained evil designs, and, as Washington afterwards wrote, “if we had been such fools as to let them [the French] go, they would never have helped us to take any other Frenchmen.”
Two scouts were sent out in advance; then, in Indian file, Washington and his men with Half King and a few Indians followed and “prepared to surround them.”
Laurel Hill, the most westerly range of the Alleghanies, trends north and south through western Pennsylvania. In Fayette county, about one mile on the summit northward from the Cumberland Road, lies Washington’s Spring where Half King encamped. The Indian trail coursed along the summit northward fifteen miles to Gist’s. On the eastern side, Laurel Hill descends into a valley varying from a hundred to five hundred feet deep. Nearly two miles from the spring, in the bottom of a valley four hundred feet deep, lay Jumonville’s “embassy.” The attacking party, guided by Indians, who had previously wriggled down the hillside on their bellies and found the French, advanced along the Indian trail and then turned off and began stealthily creeping down the mountainside.
Ledge from which Washington opened Fire upon Jumonville’s Party