to the military good name of the province as it was favorable to its political longings.  In the present case there was no such conflict of inclinations; he could help Braddock without hurting Pennsylvania.  He and his son had visited the camp, and found the General waiting restlessly for the report of the agents whom he had sent to collect wagons.  “I stayed with him,” says Franklin, “several days, and dined with him daily.  When I was about to depart, the returns of wagons to be obtained were brought in, by which it appeared that they amounted only to twenty-five, and not all of these were in serviceable condition.”  On this the General and his officers declared that the expedition was at an end, and denounced the Ministry for sending them into a country void of the means of transportation.  Franklin remarked that it was a pity they had not landed in Pennsylvania, where almost every farmer had his wagon.  Braddock caught eagerly at his words, and begged that he would use his influence to enable the troops to move.  Franklin went back to Pennsylvania, issued an address to the farmers appealing to their interest and their fears, and in a fortnight procured a hundred and fifty wagons, with a large number of horses.[205] Braddock, grateful to his benefactor, and enraged at everybody else, pronounced him “Almost the only instance of ability and honesty I have known in these provinces."[206] More wagons and more horses gradually arrived, and at the eleventh hour the march began.

[Footnote 205:  Franklin, Autobiography.  Advertisement of B. Franklin for Wagons; Address to the Inhabitants of the Counties of York, Lancaster, and Cumberland, Pennsylvania Archives,II.294]

[Footnote 206:  Braddock to Robinson,5 June,1755.  The letters of Braddock here cited are the originals in the Public Record Office]

On the tenth of May Braddock reached Wills Creek, where the whole force was now gathered, having marched thither by detachments along the banks of the Potomac.  This old trading-station of the Ohio Company had been transformed into a military post and named Fort Cumberland.  During the past winter the independent companies which had failed Washington in his need had been at work here to prepare a base of operations for Braddock.  Their axes had been of more avail than their muskets.  A broad wound had been cut in the bosom of the forest, and the murdered oaks and chestnuts turned into ramparts, barracks, and magazines.  Fort Cumberland was an enclosure of logs set upright in the ground, pierced with loopholes, and armed with ten small cannon.  It stood on a rising ground near the point where Wills Creek joined the Potomac, and the forest girded it like a mighty hedge, or rather like a paling of gaunt brown stems upholding a canopy of green.  All around spread illimitable woods, wrapping hill, valley, and mountain.  The spot was an oasis in a desert of leaves,—­if the name oasis can be given to anything so rude and harsh.  In this rugged