Friday, May 3, 2013

The Shades of Death

From an account of the British march across Pennsylvania in 1758, under General John Forbes:
After about three miles the road now entered a difficult marsh first known as the "Shades of Death" and then "Edmunds Swamp." Here a long corduroy road was constructed, and the road cut through a dense tangle of mountain laurel, brush, saplings, and briars over soft ground where daylight rarely reached, and which travelers found extremely depressing. At Edmunds Swamp another redoubt was constructed. Lieutenant Colonel Adam Stephen had his Virginians at work near Edmunds Swamp by the first week in August, reporting to Bouquet on the Shades of Death:

This morning has set the men to work about bridging the Swamp, and goes my Self with a party reconnoitre the Shades of Death, a dismal place! And wants only a Cerberus to represent Virgils gloomy description of Aeneas's entering the Infernal Regions.
Oh, please, let my crew find a site near there, so we can name it the Shades of Death Site. Oh, hell, maybe I'll just name the next site I find the Shades of Death Site no matter where it is.

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