of the forest on horseback, attended by a companion much older and rougher than himself, and followed by several Indians and four or five white men with packhorses.  Officers from the fort went out to meet the strangers; and, wading through mud and sodden snow, they entered at the gate.  On the next day the young leader of the party, with the help of an interpreter, for he spoke no French, had an interview with the commandant, and gave him a letter from Governor Dinwiddie.  Saint-Pierre and the officer next in rank, who knew a little English, took it to another room to study it at their ease; and in it, all unconsciously, they read a name destined to stand one of the noblest in the annals of mankind; for it introduced Major George Washington, Adjutant-General of the Virginia militia.[133]

[Footnote 133:  Journal of Major Washington.  Journal of Mr. Christopher Gist.]

Dinwiddie, jealously watchful of French aggression, had learned through traders and Indians that a strong detachment from Canada had entered the territories of the King of England, and built forts on Lake Erie and on a branch of the Ohio.  He wrote to challenge the invasion and summon the invaders to withdraw; and he could find none so fit to bear his message as a young man of twenty-one.  It was this rough Scotchman who launched Washington on his illustrious career.

Washington set out for the trading station of the Ohio Company on Will’s Creek; and thence, at the middle of November, struck into the wilderness with Christopher Gist as a guide, Vanbraam, a Dutchman, as French interpreter, Davison, a trader, as Indian interpreter, and four woodsmen as servants.  They went to the forks of the Ohio, and then down the river to Logstown, the Chiningue of Celoron de Bienville.  There Washington had various parleys with the Indians; and thence, after vexatious delays, he continued his journey towards Fort Le Boeuf, accompanied by the friendly chief called the Half-King and by three of his tribesmen.  For several days they followed the traders’ path, pelted with unceasing rain and snow, and came at last to the old Indian town of Venango, where French Creek enters the Alleghany.  Here there was an English trading-house; but the French had seized it, raised their flag over it, and turned it into a military outpost.[134] Joncaire was in command, with two subalterns; and nothing could exceed their civility.  They invited the strangers to supper; and, says Washington, “the wine, as they dosed themselves pretty plentifully with it, soon banished the restraint which at first appeared in their conversation, and gave a license to their tongues to reveal their sentiments more freely.  They told me that it was their absolute design to take possession of the Ohio, and, by G——­, they would do it; for that although they were sensible the English could raise two men for their one, yet they knew their motions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any undertaking of theirs."[135]