They had arrived, haggard, at Dunbar's camp at midday, the Indians' yells still ringing in their ears.

"All is lost!" they cried.

"Braddock is killed! We saw wounded officers borne off from the field. in bloody sheets! The troops are all cut to pieces!"

A panic fell upon the camp. The drums beat to arms. Many of the soldiers, wagoners and attendants, took to flight, but most of them were forced back by the sentinels.

Washington arrived at the camp in the evening and found the agitation still prevailing. The orders he brought were executed during the night, and he was in the saddle early in the morning accompanying the convoy of supplies.

At Gist's plantation, about thirteen miles off, he met Gage and his scanty force escorting Braddock and his wounded officers. Captain Stewart and a sad remnant of the Virginia Light Horse still accompanied the general as his guard.

The captain had been unremitting in his attentions to him during the retreat. There was a halt of one day at Dunbar's camp for the repose and relief of the wounded.

On the 13th they resumed their melancholy march, and that night reached the Great Meadows. The proud spirit of Braddock was broken by his defeat.

He remained silent the first evening after the battle, only ejaculating at night: "Who would have thought it!"

He was equally silent the following day; yet hope still seemed to linger in his breast, from another ejaculation: "We shall better know how to deal with them another time!"

He was grateful for the attentions paid to him by Captain Stewart and Washington, and more than once, it is said, expressed his admiration of the gallantry displayed by the Virginians in the action.

DEATH OF GENERAL BRADDOCK.

It is said, moreover, that in his last moments, he apologized to Washington for the petulance with which he had rejected his advice, and bequeathed to him his favorite charger and his faithful servant, Bishop, who had helped to convey him from the field.

General Braddock died on the night of the 13th at the Great Meadows, the place of Washington's discomfiture in the previous year.

His obsequies were performed before break of day. The chaplain having been wounded, Washington read the funeral service.

All was done in sadness and without parade, so as not to attract the attention of lurking savages, who might discover and outrage his grave. It is doubtful even whether a volley was fired over it, that last military honor he had recently paid to the remains of an Indian warrior.

The place of his sepulture, however, is known, and pointed out.

The failure of the expedition was attributed, both in England and America, to Braddock's obstinacy, his technical pedantry and his military conceit. He had been continually warned to be on his guard against ambush and surprise, but without avail.

Had he taken the advice urged on him by Washington and others to employ scouting parties of Indians and rangers, he would never have been so signally surprised and defeated.

The obsequies of the unfortunate Braddock being finished, the escort continued its retreat with the sick and wounded.

On the 17th the sad cavalcade reached the fort, and were relieved from the incessant apprehension of pursuit.

To add to the disgrace of Braddock's defeat, it was afterwards ascertained that the attacking party consisted of only seventy-two French soldiers, one hundred and forty-six Canadians and six hundred and thirty-seven Indians, led by Captain de Beaujeu.

General De Contrecoeur, commander of Fort Duquesne, had received. information, through his scouts, that the English, three thousand strong, were within six leagues of his fort.

Despairing of making an effectual defense against such a superior force, he was balancing in his mind whether to abandon his fort without awaiting their arrival or to capitulate on honorable terms.

In this dilemma Beaujeu prevailed on him to let him sally forth with detachment to form an ambush and give check to the enemy.

De Beaujeu was to have taken post at the river, and disputed the passage at the ford. For that purpose he was hurrying forward when discovered by the pioneers of Gage's advance party.

He was a gallant officer, and fell at the beginning of the fight.

The whole number of killed and wounded of French and Indians did not exceed seventy.

Such was the scanty force which the imaginations of the panic-stricken

army had magnified into a great host and from which they had fled in breathless terror, abandoning the whole frontier.

FRENCH SURPRISED AT THEIR VICTORY.

No one could be more surprised than the French commander himself when the ambuscading party returned in triumph with a long train of pack horses, laden with booty, the savages uncouthly clad in the garments of the slain, grenadier caps, officers' gold-laced coats and glittering epaulets, flourishing swords and sabers or firing off muskets, and uttering fiend-like yells of victory.

But when De Contrecoeur was informed of the utter rout and destruction of the much-dreaded British army his joy was complete.

He ordered the guns of the fort to be fired in triumph, and sent out troops in pursuit of the fugitives.

After this defeat the English officers had much more respect for Washington than before, but they said they never wished to become acquainted with such a homicidal style of fighting.

They wanted to see the enemy before them.

Could these same officers have seen 250,000 English and colonial troops fighting 50,000 Boers in South Africa in 1899, 1900 and 1901, they would possibly have changed their minds.

Twenty years after Braddock's defeat, during the Revolutionary War, these same American marksmen had the opportunity of using the British as targets, much to the sorrow of the latter.

The leader of the American forces was this same "little colonel of militia."

During the War of Independence it often happened that the British loss in killed and wounded in battle was greater than the entire strength of the Americans opposed to them.

The British were never able to understand why their cousins on this side of the Atlantic were such good shots. As the Americans, were rather busy all during the Revolution they had no time to explain.

At the battle of New Orleans-this was in the War of 1812-fifteen hundred Americans, under General Andrew Jackson, killed and wounded about four thousand of the English, led by General Packenham. The latter was among the slain.

The American loss was fifteen.

General Jackson's real and genuine fighting men (those who made it

so warm for the British) were hunters from Tennessee and Kentucky, some of whom, it was said, were born with rifles in their hands.

They were not disciplined, and their instructions in military tactics had been limited-but they could shoot.

AMERICANS ARE GOOD MARKSMEN.

Three times did the British troops, under cover of a heavy artillery fire, charge upon Jackson's keen-eyed riflemen, and three times they staggered back, the ground over which they passed being covered with dead and wounded.

For the first time in history a Scotch regiment broke and ran on the field of battle.

When the English reformed for the last charge the order was given to advance.

There was deep silence in the ranks. Both officers and men well knew that it was suicide to approach the American breastworks.

Was it mutiny or cowardice? Before that day no one had ever charged the English soldiers with being afraid.

"Will you advance?" shouted the officer in command of the surviving attacking force.

At last a gigantic grenadier stepped out of his place and replied: "No! no! We can't go against any such shooting as those Americans do."

The next order given was to retire; the English troops went aboard their ships and sailed for home, never again to come to America as enemies.

They had been taught many a bitter lesson; and the same lesson was given the Mexicans in 1846, the Spaniards in 1898 and the Chinese "Boxers" in 1900.

The marksmanship of the American soldier and naval gunner is at once the wonder and the admiration of the other nations of the world.

Washington was a strong man, physically and mentally, and while he had not received an extensive education-he left school at sixteen-he understood men and the world.

He was naturally a soldier, and there was that look in his clear, blue eye which compelled obedience.

His experience as a surveyor, which pursuit brought him into contact with the fiercest of the Indian tribes, and the training he received with the

British forces when expeditions were sent against the French and their savage allies, were of the utmost advantage to him.

WASHINGTON A GOOD FIGHTER.

The result was that when the Revolutionary War broke out he was offered the supreme command of the Continental Army.

He was then one of the foremost men in the country; had represented Virginia, his native state, in the Continental Congress; was regarded as a wise, level-headed and far-seeing man; had shown his courage many times in battle, and it was known that he was cool and collected under all conditions.

He was a patriot and a lover of liberty; his ability as a military leader was not denied, and he seemed in the eyes of the people just the man for the place.

He finally accepted, after much deliberation, the position of Commanderin-Chief, and never once, during the dark years of the conflict, did he lose heart.

His example revived the drooping spirits of the soldiers, who, without food, clothes or shoes, fought on.

Congress had no money to pay the troops; the patriots made their own ammunition, or captured it from the British, who were well supplied with everything.

When they marched the roadway was spotted with blood from their torn and naked feet.

When they were whipped-which was not so often the case-they hoped for better luck next time; when they were down-hearted they looked at their Commander-in-Chief and kept on fighting.

It is said that Washington never lost his temper but once. This was at the Battle of Monmouth Court House, when one of the generals executed an order given by Washington in a manner the latter disliked.

The story runs that the "Father of His Country" expressed his disapproval in terms so plain and blunt that those within hearing had no difficulty. whatever in understanding what he meant.

General Washington often admitted he possessed a most violent temper, and that the hardest thing in the world was for him to control it. It is also a part of the same story that Washington was heartily ashamed of his outbreak in Monmouth, in spite of the fact that he had great justification in his anger at the time.