suitable reply. Meanwhile the young envoy saw and heard all there was to be seen and heardfrom the fort itself, built about a hollow square, with bastions and palisades twelve feet high, and a guard house and chapel inside, to the number of canoes which might be ready for transporting soldiers down the river during the coming spring.

On the evening of the 14th the Chevalier de St. Pierre delivered to Washington, sealed, his reply to the Governor of Virginia's letter. It was a shrewd but courteous letter, referring the Governor to "the man higher up," Marquis Duquesne, then military Governor of Canada. But the white men of the party could not induce the Indians to leave with them. Washington relates in his journal:

"The Commandant ordered a plentiful store of liquor and provisions to be put on board our canoes, and appeared to be extremely complaisant, though he was exerting every artifice which he could invent to set our Indians at variance with us, to prevent their going till after our departure; presents, rewards, and everything which could be sug

gested by him or his officers. I cannot say that ever in my life I suffered so much anxiety as I did in this affair. I saw that every stratagem which the most fruitful brain could invent was practised to win Half King to their interests, and that leaving them there was giving them the opportunity they aimed at.

"I went to the Half King, and pressed him in the strongest terms to go; he told me that the Commandant would not discharge him until the next morning. I then went to the Commandant and complained to him of illtreatment; for keeping them, as they were a part of my company, was detaining me. This he promised not to do, but to forward my journey as much as he could. He protested he did not keep them, but was ignorant of the cause of their stay; though I soon found it out. He had promised them a present of guns if they would wait until the morning. As I am very much pressed by the Indians to wait this day for them, I consented, on the promise that nothing should hinder them in the morning."

CHAPTER XI

YOUNG WASHINGTON'S Two HAIRBREADTH

ESCAPES

THE next morning the French felt obliged to give the Indians the guns they had promised. Then they offered the chiefs more liquor, which the poor Indians found nearly as hard to leave behind as the guns. But early in the day, before the chiefs could be intoxicated, the young diplomat appealed to the Half King's Indian sense of honor, reminding him that he had pledged his royal word that they would go when they got the guns from the French. With the aid of the Half King and the Virginians, Washington escorted old Jeskakake and White Thunder down to the creek.

They went as if they were prisoners of state. The French commander fired a volley speeding the parting guests as if they were the embassy of a world power, and tried to load a canoe with some wines for their journey. The party embarked in two large canoes, the white men in one

-Washington.

and the Indians in the other. Though the conditions were not favorable for a canoe race between the white men and red, there seems to have been a little of the race spirit. The Indians ran ahead the first day. The white men's canoe proceeded sixteen miles and camped for the night. They caught up with the Indians next day, for they had stopped and gone on a bear hunt, bagging three of the big beasts. The whole party spent the rest of the day in camp here to allow the Indians to have their feast and bear dance, and to wait for one of their number who had not returned from the hunt.

The next morning the missing Indian had come back, so the white men went ahead. They traveled two days when their passage was blocked by an ice dam. After trying to break a way through this they gave it up and, carrying their canoe and cargo across a point of land, launched it in clear water. Before long they were overtaken by the Indians, with three more canoes of Frenchmen, and the crew of a fourth canoe which had been lost in the creek with a load of powder and lead. The whole party camped that night about twenty miles above Venango.

The creek had been so high as to be turbulent and dangerous, but now it had fallen so fast all hands had to get out, again and again, for fear the canoes would upset, and wade in the freezing water for half an hour at a time, pulling the frail crafts about and dragging them over shallow places clogged with rocks which were covered with a coating of ice.

Once, in deep water, a French canoe capsized, dumping its cargo of wine and brandy into the icy water. As liquors had caused them so much trouble, the Virginians paddled by and, as it is recorded in Washington's journal, "let them shift for themselves."

On the 22d, after six days of rough and hazardous experiences that strange flotilla of canoes arrived at Venango. Washington and his retinue marched up to the Captain's cabin with their clothes frozen stiff and glistening, like knights of old in icy armor. Jolly Captain Joncaire received them again with hearty hospitality.

Being half Indian himself, he knew how to appeal to the Indian chiefs by flattery, and making up to them for the liquor they had ruefully left behind them at the fort. With wiles and