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156 a week there had been no bread. In two days Fort Necessity was reached, where, quite exhausted, the little army went into camp. There were only a few bags of flour here. It was plain, now, that the retreat was ill-advised. Human strength could not endure it. So there was nothing to do but send post-haste to Wills Creek for help. But, if strength were lacking—there was courage, and to spare! For after a "full and free" conference of the officers it was determined to enlarge the stockade, strengthen the fortifications, and await the enemy whatever his number and power.

The day following was spent in this work and famed Fort Necessity was completed. It was the shape of an irregular square situated upon a small height of land near the center of the swampy meadow. "The natural entrenchments" of which Washington speaks in his Journal may have been merely this height of ground, or old courses of the two brooks which flow by it on the north and on the east. At any rate the fort was built on an "island," so to speak, in the wet lowland. A narrow neck of solid land connected it with the southern