main party to follow with the baggage and hurried on ahead along
Braddock's old road in order to fill an appointment to be at Gilbert
Simpson's by the fifteenth. Passing through the dark tangle of Laurel
known as the Shades of Death, he came on September twelfth to the
opening among the mountains--the Great Meadows--where in 1754 in his
rude little fort of logs, aptly named Fort Necessity, he had fought the
French and had been conquered by them. He owned the spot now, for in
1770 Crawford had bought it for him for "30 Pistols[3]," Thirty years
before, as an enthusiastic youth, he had called it a "charming field for
an encounter"; now he spoke of it as "capable of being turned to great
advantage ... a very good stand for a Tavern--much Hay may be cut here
When the ground is laid down in grass & the upland, East of the Meadow,
is good for grain."

[3] Doubtless he meant pistoles, coins, not weapons.

Not a word about the spot's old associations!

The same day he pushed on through the mountains, meeting "numbers of
Persons & Pack horses going in with Ginseng; & for Salt & other articles
at the Markets below," and near nightfall reached on the Youghiogheny
River the tract on which Gilbert Simpson, his agent, lived. He found the
land poorer than he had expected and the buildings that had been erected
indifferent, while the mill was in such bad condition that "little Rent,
or good is to be expected from the present aspect of her," He was, in
fact, unable to find a renter for the mill and let the land, twelve
hundred acres, now worth millions, for only five hundred bushels
of wheat!

The land had cost him far more than he had received from it. Simpson had