Page:Annals of Augusta County.djvu/81

 ing to the Lieutenant, also on the 8th, he says:—"I have been informed you was twenty- two days in marching six miles; this is not agreeable to the opinion I conceived of you."

General Braddock arrived in Virginia February 19, 1755, with two regiments of British soldiers, and proceeded to Alexandria, as the most convenient place at which to organize an expedition to the Ohio. Washington was summoned from Mt. Vernon, to act as one of the General's aides, and promptly undertook the duty. The command consisted of the two regiments of regulars, augmented by some Virginia levies selected for the purpose; two companies of "hatchet men"; six of rangers, from different provinces; and one troop of light horse. The whole composed an army of nearly twenty-five hundred men.

The Virginia recruits and companies were clothed and drilled to make them look like soldiers. They were ridiculed by young British officers, one of whom wrote: "They performed their evolutions and firings as well as could be expected, but their languid, spiritless and unsoldier-like appearance, considered with the lowness and ignorance of most of their officers, gave little hopes of their future good behavior." In a few weeks, however, the survivors of Braddock's army entertained a different opinion of the provincial troops.

The army set out from Alexandria April 20th, and proceeded by way of Winchester, Fredericktown and Cumberland. What Augusta men accompanied the expedition, we do not know. It is said that Peter Hogg was one of the Virginia captains, and we know nothing to the contrary. He was ordered by Governor Dinwiddle to repair to Alexandria, only a little before General Braddock arrived there. An humble member of the expedition was a negro slave named Gilbert, who died in Staunton, in 1844, at the reputed age of one hundred and twelve years.

Leaving General Braddock and his army to pursue their tedious and painful march, let us observe the course of a peaceful traveler who at the same time traversed the Valley of Virginia.

The Rev. Hugh McAden, a young Presbyterian minister, went from Pennsylvania to North Carolina on horseback in 1755. He kept a diary of his trip, which we find in Foote's Sketches of North Carolina. It appears from the diary that an excessive drought prevailed in the county during that summer.