On October 30, 1753, Washington left Williamsburg, with a journey of more than a thousand miles before him.  How that journey was accomplished, what perils he faced, what difficulties he overcame, how, on more than one occasion his life hung by a thread—­all this he has told, briefly and modestly, in the journal which he kept of the expedition.  Three months from the time he started, he was back again in Williamsburg, having faced his first great responsibility, and done his work absolutely well.  He had shown a cool courage that nothing could shake, a fine patience, and a penetration and perception which nothing could escape.  He was the hero of the hour in the little Virginia capital; the whole colony perceived that here was a man to be depended upon.

He had found the French very active along the Ohio, preparing to build forts and hold the country, and laughing at Dinwiddie’s summons to vacate it.  This news caused Virginia to put a military force in the field at once, and dispatch it to the west, with Washington in virtual command.  It was hoped to build a strong fort at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which would prevent the French getting to the Ohio, since all travel in that wilderness must be by water.  On May 28, 1754, while hastening forward to secure this position, Washington’s little force encountered a party of French, and the first shots were exchanged of the great contest which, twelve years later, was to result in the expulsion of the French from the continent.  It was Washington who gave the word to fire, little foreseeing what history he was making.

“I heard the bullets whistle,” he wrote home to his mother, “and believe me, there is something charming in the sound”—­a bit of bravado which shows that Washington had not yet quite outgrown his boyhood.  No doubt the bullets sounded much less charmingly five weeks later when he and his men, brought to bay in a rude fortification which he named Fort Necessity, were surrounded by a superior force of French and Indians, and, after an all-day fight, compelled to surrender.  It is worth remarking that this bitter defeat—­the first reverse which Washington suffered—­occurred on the third day of July, 1754.  Twenty-one years from that day, he was to draw his sword at the head of an American army.

Washington made his way back to Virginia with the news of his failure.  The French had occupied the vantage ground he was aiming at and at once proceeded to erect a fort there, which they named Duquesne.  Aid was asked from England to repel these invaders, and early in 1755, a great force under Major-General Edward Braddock advanced against the enemy.  Washington served as aide-de-camp to the general, whose ideas of warfare had been gained on the battlefields of Europe, and who could not understand that these ideas did not apply to warfare in a wilderness.  In consequence, when only a few miles from the fort, he was attacked by a force of French and Indians, his