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I do not pretend, even now, to be acquainted with all the reasons which influenced the general; but having made up his mind, we broke camp on the 8th and marched southwest along a little stream the scouts called Long Run, and so about eight miles towards the river Monongahela, being thus at last two miles from the ford he meant to cross the next day.

When, in the afternoon about six o'clock, I was released from duty, I walked through the camps with Sir Peter Halket. The men were cleaning their guns and brushing their clothes and soaping queues and pipe-claying, all as if for parade and very needless.

Sir Peter, a man of excellent parts and a good soldier, had expressed himself in the council as averse to the plan of march. When he asked after my health and if I had again regained my strength, I replied that I was fit for duty, but had been better if I had been able to sleep. He said with