* * * * *

A second plate was buried below the mouth of French Creek; a third near the mouth of Wheeling Creek; and a fourth at the mouth of the Muskingum, where half a century later it was found protruding from the river bank by a party of boys while bathing.  Yet another was unearthed at the mouth of the Great Kanawha by a freshet, and was likewise found by a boy while playing at the water’s edge.  The last plate was hidden where the Great Miami joins the Ohio; and this done, Celoron crossed Ohio to Lake Erie and went back to Montreal.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Read T. J. Chapman’s The French in the Allegheny Valley, pp. 9-23, 187-197; Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol.  I., pp. 36-62; Winsor’s The Mississippi Basin, pp. 252-255.]

%77.  The French build Forts on the Allegheny.%—­This formal taking possession of the valleys of the Allegheny and the Ohio was all well enough in its way; but the French knew that if they really intended to keep out the British they must depend on forts and troops, and not on lead plates.  To convince the French King of this, required time; so that it was not till 1752 that orders were given to fortify the route taken by Celoron in 1749.  The party charged with this duty repaired to the little peninsula where is now the city of Erie, and there built a log fort which they called Presque Isle.  Having done this, they cut a road twenty miles long, to the site of Waterford, Pa., and built Fort Le Boeuf, and later one at Venango, the present site of the town of Franklin.

%78.  Washington’s First Public Service.%—­The arrival of the French in western Pennsylvania alarmed and excited no one so much as Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia.  He had two good reasons for his excitement.  In the first place, Virginia, because of the interpretation she placed on her charter of 1609, claimed to own the Allegheny valley (see p. 33).  In the second place, the governor and a number of Virginia planters were deeply interested in a great land company called the Ohio Company, to which the King of England had given 500,000 acres lying along the Ohio River between the Monongahela and the Kanawha rivers, a region which the French claimed, and toward which they were moving.

As soon, therefore, as Dinwiddie heard that the French were really building forts in the upper Allegheny valley, he determined to make a formal demand for their withdrawal, and chose as his messenger George Washington, then a young man of twenty-one, and adjutant general of the Virginia militia.

Washington’s instructions bade him go to Logstown, on the Ohio, find out all he could as to the whereabouts of the French, and then proceed to the commanding officer, deliver the letter of Dinwiddie, and demand an answer.  He was especially charged to ascertain how many French forts had been erected, how many soldiers there were in each, how far apart the posts were, and if they were to be supported from Quebec.[1]