hundred others that strewed the ground. At the moment Sir Peter remembered him of a peculiar artificial tooth which his father bore. The bones were then separated, and an examination of those which lay undermost at once solved all doubts. "It is my father!" exclaimed the unhappy youth, as he sunk into the arms of his scarce less affected friends. Brief and stern, as befits a soldier buried upon the battlefield, were the rites that followed. Wrapped in a Highland plaid, the twain who "in death were not divided," were interred in a common grave. In lieu of solemn dirges and the passing bell, the rattling sounds of musketry awoke the long-slumbering echoes of the mountains as the customary volleys were fired above their breasts. As the chasm was being closed, a stone was brought from the hill-side and placed within its mouth. Overgrown now with tall grass, this and the waning memories of a few old men alone point out the spot where for nine-and-ninety years have slept well the brave, the accomplished, the unfortunate representatives of a chivalrous line. Thus, remote from the dust of their fathers, in unnoted, unhonored graves, rest the bones of Braddock and of his scarce less unfortunate subordinate. A forest oak appropriately points out the sepulture of the first; but this memorial will not long serve to fulfil its task, since its system. is already touched by the finger of decay, and its blasted crest seems to relate with a melancholy significance to not only his fate to whom it owes a name, but to its own prospective doom. Less perishable than the productions of The wood-cut upon page 280 of this volume gives a very accurate representation of this tree. The original drawing was made, during the nature, the handiworks of art have remained to link the interest of later times with the associations of the past. The sash in which the body of the General was carried from the field, is said to be yet preserved in the family of the late President Taylor, to whom it was presented during the Mexican campaign through the intervention of General Gaines. Of its history during the interim, nothing is said; but a detailed description of its present appearance and the circumstances under which it came into General Taylor's hands are given us. The reader will recollect that for a long period it was the custom of officers to wear with their uniform a sash of scarlet silken net-work, the use of which was to bear them, if wounded, from the ground. On that of Braddock the date of its manufacture (1707) is wrought in the woof; and the dark stains upon its texture still exist, mute but unfailing witnesses of the fatal stroke. After the burial of the Halkets, in a large shallow pit hard by were cast what remained of about four hundred soldiers; this done, the troops returned to Fort Pitt, satisfied with having at least removed from sight so many of the most melancholy testimonials of their misfortunes. But the work was incomplete: twenty-one years after, when Jasper (subsequently Mr. Justice) Yeates visited the field, he found it strewed with skulls and bones, and the trees around, to the height of twenty feet from the earth, scarred with musket bullets and cannon balls.2 When summer of 1854, by that skilful artist, Mr. Weber: by whom it was presented to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 'De Hass: Hist. Western Virg., 129. 2 Galt's West. VI. Haz. Reg., 104. In 1854 I was accompanied to this spot by a garrulous old man alleging himself the son of one of the peace returned and the farmer's plough was passed over the spot, the scene of the thickest of the fight became known as the Bullet Field. But fifty years of cultivation have wrought their customary effect; and where once the hill-sides ran red with blood down to the stream below, now Peaceful smiles the harvest, And stainless flows the tide. A more tranquil, rural landscape than that at this day presented by the battle-ground of the Monongahela cannot well be imagined. The ploughman no longer turns up in his labors the evidences of war; and it is difficult, at first blush, to recognize the features of the scene. As yet, how party who buried the Halkets. He was possessed with the vulgar idea that there was considerable treasure upon the bodies, and only needed a little countenancing to explore the ground. It is hoped that the discouragement he received will preserve this grave from such an unhallowed violation as attended Braddock's. It is singular what an infatuation on this subject obtains in the common mind. The accidental discovery by an Irish laborer on a railway cutting of twenty golden guineas among a mass of bones sufficed to set in a ferment the souls of many of the lower classes about Braddock's Field. If these may be relied on, it would seem that a little harvest of dollars was once fished from the river where they had laid since his defeat, by a neighboring farmer. But probably the tale is entirely the creature of a clumsy imagination. There have, however, been found other and more interesting relics of the French occupation of Du Quesne. Some of their artillery they appear to have sunk in the Ohio, when they evacuated the fort and M'Kec's Rocks, just below the mouth of Chartier's Creek, is pointed out as the particular spot. One of their gun-carriages was not long since discovered here; and in the siege of Fort Henry (Wheeling), in 1782, by the British and Indians, the defendants found their account in the possession of a cannon similarly obtained. De Hass, 47, 266. |