[Sidenote:  Louisiana settled, 1699.]

95.  Founding of Louisiana.—­La Salle named this immense region Louisiana in honor of the French king.  He soon led an expedition to plant a colony on the banks of the Mississippi.  Sailing into the Gulf of Mexico, he missed the mouth of the Mississippi and landed on the coast of Texas.  Misfortune after misfortune now fell on the unhappy expedition.  La Salle was murdered, the stores were destroyed, the Spaniards and Indians came and killed or captured nearly all the colonists.  A few only gained the Mississippi and made their way to Canada.  In 1699, another French expedition appeared in the Gulf of Mexico.  This time the mouth of the Mississippi was easily discovered.  But the colonists settled on the shores of Mobile Bay.  It was not until 1718 that New Orleans was founded.

[Sidenote:  The French on the Ohio, 1749. McMaster, 82-86.]

[Sidenote:  The English Ohio Company, 1750.]

96.  Struggle for the Ohio Valley.—­At the close of King George’s War the French set to work to connect the settlements in Louisiana with those on the St. Lawrence.  In 1749 French explorers gained the Alleghany River from Lake Erie and went down the Ohio as far as the Miami.  The next year (1750) King George gave a great tract of land on the Ohio River to an association of Virginians, who formed the Ohio Company.  The struggle for the Ohio Valley had fairly begun.  Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia learned that the French were building forts on the Ohio, and sent them a letter protesting against their so doing.  The bearer of this letter was George Washington, a young Virginia surveyor.

[Sidenote:  George Washington.  Scudder’s Washington; Hero Tales 1-15.]

[Sidenote:  He warns the French to leave the Ohio.]

97.  George Washington.—­Of an old Virginia family, George Washington grew up with the idea that he must earn his own living.  His father was a well-to-do planter.  But Augustine Washington was the eldest son, and, as was the custom then in Virginia, he inherited most of the property.  Augustine Washington was very kind to his younger brother, and gave him a good practical education as a land surveyor.  The younger man was a bold athlete and fond of studying military campaigns.  He was full of courage, industrious, honest, and of great common sense.  Before he was twenty he had surveyed large tracts of wilderness, and had done his work well amidst great difficulties.  When Dinwiddie wanted a messenger to take his letter to the French commander on the Ohio, George Washington’s employer at once suggested him as the best person to send on the dangerous journey.

[Sidenote:  The French build Fort Duquesne.]

[Sidenote:  Washington’s first military expedition, 1754.]

98.  Fort Duquesne.—­Instead of heeding Dinwiddie’s warning, the French set to work to build Fort Duquesne (Due-kan’) at the spot where the Alleghany and Monongahela join to form the Ohio,—­on the site of the present city of Pittsburg.  Dinwiddie therefore sent Washington with a small force of soldiers to drive them away.  But the French were too strong for Washington.  They besieged him in Fort Necessity and compelled him to surrender (July 4, 1754).