shot, and clothing to buy the good-will of the Indians. Instead of going to the place to which he had been sent, Trent marched off in another direction to a town at which Gist had been received in a friendly manner.

On arriving there he found that settlement had been attacked and burned, and that the English traders had either been killed or carried away prisoners, and the French flag was floating over the charred remains of what had been a flourishing trading post.

This was too much for timid Captain Trent. He went home as fast as he could go and reported to Governor Dinwiddie that the French Indians were already on the war path. Therefore, it was useless to warn the French off the premises when they were ready to fight to prove their own right to them.

CHAPTER X

YOUNG WASHINGTON GOES ON A DANGEROUS ERRAND

MAJOR GEORGE WASHINGTON was busy as manager of the Mount Vernon estate, riding twelve to fifteen miles every day to superintendent all the work that was going on, besides his extra duties as chief executor of his brother's will. If any one had a good excuse for refusing to take outside work upon himself it was he, for surely he seemed to have his hands full.

So he must have been surprised when Governor Dinwiddie sent word that he was appointed commissioner or envoy to go on an important mission for the Colony. Of course, George had heard of Captain Trent's failure to give the French the Governor's "notice to quit" the English territory. If it was a dangerous errand when the captain went, it must be doubly perilous now. George's youth was against him,

especially in dealing with the Indians. "Old men for counsel," was an Indian saying. Even the French officers would laugh in their sleeves at a boy ambassador.

But George had courage, tact, common sense, experience with and knowledge of the Indians' ways. The very obstacles that had alarmed Captain Trent fired his brave young soldier heart. He shared the family's public spirit, and was ready to do anything he could for his country at a moment's notice. So he consented to undertake the difficult and dangerous mission. It would have been a hard and risky journey through the pathless forests, across swollen and frozen streams in the dead of winter, without the danger of being killed and scalped by Indians already on the warpath.

George did not suppose the French soldiers would enjoy being warned off the premises they claimed to have more right to than the English, but he said he would go, and do the best he could.

He started from Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia, on the 30th of October, 1753, on the same day the Governor handed him the letter which was to tell the French commander, in po

lite, indirect language, to leave their posts as they had no right there. The young envoy was instructed to go first to Logstown, the council village of the Ohio Indians, and get some of the chiefs to go with him to the French headquarters. He was to wait there not over a week for a reply, to observe and find out all that he could while there, and to ask the French to send an escort of French back with him.

Young Washington started off without any escort, picking up Van Braam, his old fencing master, at Fredericksburg, where he called to say good-bye to his mother, who, naturally enough, did not approve of their sending her son on such a dangerous journey. Van Braam went with him as interpreter to the French, though he afterward showed that he was not very well skilled in that language. At Wills's Creek (now Cumberland) he met Christopher Gist, the guide and scout who had long been in the employ of the Ohio Company. Here the brave little expedition was fitted out. John Davidson was engaged as Indian interpreter, though both George and Gist had had experience with several Indian dialects. Four woodsmen went with them to drive and take care of the horses and

provisions. The cavalcade set off on horseback, the 11th of November, through rain, sleet, and snow, to the nearest point on the Monongahela River, at the mouth of Turtle Creek.

Here the young Major found John Frazier, who had been a gunmaster at the trading posts of Venango. He had made his escape, though other English traders there were captured and carried off to Canada. The autumn rains and snows had raised the rivers so that Washington and his caravan were obliged to swim their horses. He decided to send their baggage and stores down the Monongahela in a canoe with directions to wait for him at the "Fork of the Ohio," as the junction of the Monongahela with the Allegheny was called. In the diary which he kept of this journey he wrote the following shrewd observation:

"As I got down before the canoe I spent some time in viewing the rivers, and the land at the Fork, which I think extremely well situated for a fort, as it has the absolute command of both rivers, which are a quarter of a mile or more across, and run very nearly at right angles."