Nobody can read the letters of Washington at this time without feeling that the imputations of Forbes were unjust, and that here, as elsewhere, his ruling motive was the public good.[649] Forbes himself, seeing the rugged and difficult nature of the country, began to doubt whether after all he had not better have chosen the old road of Braddock.  He soon had an interview with its chief advocates, the two Virginia colonels, Washington and Burd, and reported the result to Bouquet, adding:  “I told them that, whatever they thought, I had acted on the best information to be had, and could safely say for myself, and believed I might answer for you, that the good of the service was all we had at heart, not valuing provincial interest, jealousies, or suspicions on single twopence.”  It must be owned that, considering the slow and sure mode of advance which he had wisely adopted, the old soldier was probably right in his choice; since before the army could reach Fort Duquesne, the autumnal floods would have made the Youghiogany and the Monongahela impassable.

[Footnote 649:  Besides the printed letters, there is an autograph collection of his correspondence with Bouquet in 1758 (forming vol. 21,641, Additional Manuscripts, British Museum).  Copies of the whole are before me.]

The Sir John mentioned by Forbes was the quartermaster-general, Sir John Sinclair, who had gone forward with Virginians and other troops from the camp of Bouquet to make the road over the main range of the Alleghanies, whence he sent back the following memorandum of his requirements:  “Pickaxes, crows, and shovels; likewise more whiskey.  Send me the newspapers, and tell my black to send me a candlestick and half a loaf of sugar.”  He was extremely inefficient; and Forbes, out of all patience with him, wrote confidentially to Bouquet that his only talent was for throwing everything into confusion.  Yet he found fault with everybody else, and would discharge volleys of oaths at all who met his disapproval.  From this cause or some other, Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen, of the Virginians, told him that he would break his sword rather than be longer under his orders.  “As I had not sufficient strength,” says Sinclair, “to take him by the neck from among his own men, I was obliged to let him have his own way, that I might not be the occasion of bloodshed.”  He succeeded at last in arresting him, and Major Lewis, of the same regiment, took his place.

The aid of Indians as scouts and skirmishers was of the last importance to an army so weak in the arts of woodcraft, and efforts were made to engage the services of the friendly Cherokees and Catawbas, many of whom came to the camp, where their caprice, insolence, and rapacity tried to the utmost the patience of the commanders.  That of Sir John Sinclair had already been overcome by his dealings with the provincial authorities; and he wrote in good French, at the tail of a letter to the Swiss colonel:  “Adieu, my dear Bouquet.