Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 3).djvu/186

182 of Fort Necessity. Mr. Lewis gives exactly the area of a triangle with it as a part of the base line.

5. Loop M S N would not come near the course of the brook without extending it far beyond Mr. Lewis's estimate of the length of its sides.

6. Its area is only about 5200 square feet which would make Fort Necessity unconscionably small in face of the fact that more high ground was available.

In 1759 Colonel Burd visited the site of Fort Necessity. This was only five years after it was built. He described its remains as circular in shape. If it was originally a triangle it is improbable that it could have appeared round five years later. If, however, it was originally an irregular square, it is not improbable that the rains and frosts of five winters, combined with the demolition of the fort by the French, would have given the mounds a circular appearance. Was Fort Necessity, then, built in the form of an irregular square? There is the best of evidence that it was.

In 1830—fourteen years after Mr. Lewis's "survey"—Mr. Jared Sparks, a