Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/197

Rh movement. Excluding invalids, and garrisons to be left at the four forts on the line of march, Wayne estimated his available force at twenty-six hundred regulars and three hundred and sixty mounted volunteers. " you may rest assured," Wayne wrote Knox upon leaving Fort Washington, "that I will not commit the legion [risk an engagement] unnecessarily; and unless more powerfully supported  I will content myself by taking a strong position advanced of [Fort] Jefferson, and by exerting every power, endeavor to protect the frontiers, and to secure the posts and army during the winter."

Already the far-sighted Wayne had anticipated the matter of road-building, an important department of a pioneer general's duty in which he particularly excelled. As early as July 10, the American commissioners to the hostile tribes wrote Secretary Knox that the Indian scouts reported that Wayne "has cut and cleared a road, straight from fort Washington, into the Indian country, in a direction that would have