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Rh ington's advice he here divided his army, preparing to push on to Fort Duquesne with a flying column of fourteen hundred men. Washington found the first western river almost dry and reasoned that Riviere aux Bœufs would be too dry to transport southward the reinforcements that were hurrying from Canada.

On the nineteenth, Braddock advanced with Colonel Halket and Lieutenant Colonels Burton and Gage and Major Sparks, leaving Colonel Dunbar and Major Chapman—to their disgust—to hobble on with the sick and dying men and horses, the sorry line of wagons creaking under their heavy loads. The young Virginian Colonel was left at the very first camp in a raging fever. Though unable to push on further with the column that would capture Duquesne, yet Braddock considerately satisfied the ambition of Washington by promising that he should be brought up before the attack was made. Washington wrote home that he would not miss the capture of Duquesne "for five hundred pounds!"

With the flying column were taken the Indians that were with the army but which