brothers the English, have heard this, and I come now to tell it to you; for I am not afraid to discharge you off this land."

The French commandant seems to have replied in a very truculent spirit, as reported by the Indian chief:

"Now, my child, I have heard your speech; you spoke first, but it is my time to speak now. Where is my wampum, that you took away with the marks of towns upon it? This wampum I do not know, which you have discharged me off the land with; but you need not put yourself to the trouble of speaking, for I will not hear you. I am not afraid of flies or musquitoes, for Indians are such as those; I tell you, down that river I will go, and build upon it, according to my command. If the river was blocked up, I have forces sufficient to burst it open, and tread under my feet all that stand in opposition, together with their alliances; for my force is as the sand upon the sea-shore; therefore here is your wampum; I sling it at you. Child, you talk foolish; you say this land belongs to you, but there is not the black of my nail yours. I saw that land sooner than you did, before the Shannoahs and you were at war; Lead was the man who went down and took possession of that river. It is my land, and I will have it, let who will stand up for or say against it. I will buy and sell with the English. If people will be ruled by me they may expect kindness, but not else."

Mr. Sparks, remarking upon these speeches, says well, "The high-minded savage was not aware that, as far as he and his race were concerned, there was no difference between his professed friends and open enemies. He had never studied in the school of politics, which finds an excuse for rapacity and injustice in the law of nations, nor learned that it was the prerogative of civilization to prey upon the ignorant and defenceless."

On the 26th a council was held, and Washington in his turn made a speech, with the usual sprinkling of "Brothers," but stating succinctly and candidly the objects of his journey. The Half-king desired him not to be in a hurry, and suggested some reasons for delay, to which Washington, after much argument and remonstrance, was obliged to yield, for fear of defeating the object of his journey. "As I found it was impossible," he says, to get off without affronting them in the most egregious manner, I consented to stay."

Three chiefs and one of the best hunters were at length appointed to compose the convoy, and on the 4th of December they

arrived at Venango, an old Indian town at the mouth of French Creek, on the Ohio, "without any thing remarkable happening," says Washington, "but a continued series of bad weather."

Here they fell in with Captain Joncaire, an interpreter, and one who had great influence over the Indians. He assumed to be the commander of the Ohio, but recommended to the young commissioner to carry his business to the general, who had his quarters at the near fort. At first the French were extremely civil, but when the wine began to go round, they verified the proverb by telling much that they had intended to conceal: that it was their absolute design to take possession of the Ohio, and that they would do it too; for although they knew the English could raise two men for their one, yet their motions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any undertaking of the French. Captain Joncaire plied the Indians with liquor, and used every possible artifice to entice them to go no further, but after much difficulty the party was once more on the road, and, travelling four days more through "excessive rains, snows, and bad travelling through many mires and swamps," they at length reached the fort, and found the French commandant, a knight of St. Louis, Legardeur de St. Pierre, a gentlemanly old soldier. The fort was a considerable one, garrisoned at that time by about one hundred men, and a large number of officers. While the officers were debating upon the Governor's missive, Washington was reconnoitering in every direction, taking the dimensions of the fort, counting the canoes, &c. The latter amounted to about fifty, laid up in readiness to convey the forces down the river in the Spring. On Washington's inquiring of the commandant by what authority he had made prisoners of several English subjects, he said that the country belonged to the French, and that he had orders to make prisoners of every Englishman who attempled to trade on the waters of the Ohio.

The Sieur St. Pierre was profuse in civilities, but did every thing in his power to separate the Indian convoy from the party. Washington says, in the journal,

"I cannot say that ever in my life I suffered so much anxiety as I did in this affair." His life had not been very long, but his expressions were always very moderate, so that we may imagine his perplexity. To leave the Half-king bohind, was to give him and his following over to the French interest, which was not to be thought of. Washington went

to the general and remonstrated, was met with fair words and professions as usual, but still could not get his Indians off, liquor being again put in requisition to incapacitate them for every thing but quarrelling or sleeping.

At length the Half-king, for shame's sake, put an end to the delay, and the party set out on their return, to travel one hundred and thirty miles in canoes, the horses having been exhausted and sent on before. They were destined to encounter new hardships in the new way of travel. "Several times," writes the chief, in his Report, "we had like to have been staved against rocks; and many times we were obliged, all hands, to get out and remain in the water half an hour or more, getting over the shoals. At one place the ice had lodged and made it impassable by water; we were therefore obliged to carry our canoe across the neck of land, a quarter of a mile over. We did not reach Venango till the 22d, where we met with our horses."

The horses being nearly useless from fatigue and poor feeding, the cold increasing every day, and the roads blocked up by a heavy snow, Washington, anxious to get back and make his report to the Governor, resolved upon attempting the remainder of the journey on foot, accompanied only by Mr. Gist, the most experienced of the party, and leaving the baggage and effects in charge of Mr. Van Braam. With gun in hand, and the necessary papers and provisions in a pack strapped on his back, he set out, with a single companion, to thread the trackless forest, on the twenty-sixth of December, not without some misgivings, as we may well believe. On the second day the two travellers encountered a party of Indians in league with the French, who were lying in wait for them. One of the savages fired at them, not fifteen paces off, and missed; but instead of returning the fire, which might have brought the whole pack upon them, they simply took the fellow into custody and kept him till nine o'clock in the evening; then let him go, and walked all night to get the start of whoever might attempt to follow. The next day they walked on until dark, and reached the river, about two miles above the Fork of the Ohio, the ice driving down in great quantities.

Here it was that the incident of the whirling raft occurred, which had so nearly changed the fortunes of our first struggle for independence, if not the whole destiny of our country for an age or two at least. The journalist states the occurrence thus:

"There was no way for getting over but on a raft, which we set about with one poor hatchet, and finished just after sunsetting. This was one whole day's work. We next got it launched, then went on board of it and set off; but before we were half way over, we were jammed in the ice in such a manner that we expected every moment our raft to sink and ourselves to perish. I put out my settingpole to try to stop the raft, that the ice might pass by, when the rapidity of the stream threw it with so much violence against the pole, that it jerked me out into ten feet water, but I fortunately saved myself by catching hold of one of the raftlogs. Notwithstanding all our efforts, we could not get to either shore, but were obliged, as we were near an island, to quit our raft and make to it. The cold was so extremely severe that Mr. Gist had all his fingers and some of his toes frozen, and the water shut up so hard that we found no difficulty in getting off the island on the ice in the morning.'

11

We have seen several picturings of the scene on the raft, and one of Washington struggling in the icy water, but we should like to see one that would express the condition of the two half-frozen travellers on the island through that night, without tent or fire, and wrapt in the stiff, frozen clothes with which one of them, at least, must have come on shore. Not a word is said of this in the journal; of the horrors of cold, fatigue and hunger all at once; the long hours till morning, the reasonable dread of such savage dangers as had already been encountered. Well may Washington say this travel of eleven weeks had been as fatiguing a journey as it is possible to conceive;" and he adds, "From the first day of December to the 15th, there was but one day on which it did not rain or snow incessantly; and throughout the whole journey we met with nothing but one continued series of cold, wet weather, which occasioned very uncomfortable lodgings, especially after we had quitted our tent, which was some screen from the inclemency of it."

Uncomfortable lodgings!

On his return to Williamsburg, Mr. Robertson, speaker of the House of Burgesses, took the opportunity of Washington's being in the gallery of the house to pay him a high compliment, by proposing that the thanks of the House should be presented to the youthful major. This was instantly acceded to, and besides the usual form of words, we are told "the House rose, as one man, and turning towards Washington, saluted him with a

general bow." It is hardly necessary to observe that this must have been far more embarrassing than gratifying to a modest man of one and twenty, and it is not to be wondered at that the recipient of so unusual a testimonial of approbation was overwhelmed with confusion, as he rose to attempt the impromptu reply, which he knew would be expected by these good-hearted gentlemen. He blushed, stammered, stopped; and had succeeded in uttering no more than, "Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker!" when Mr. Robertson kindly called out-"Sit down, Major Washington, sit down! your modesty is equal to your merit."

They reached Williamsburg on the 16th of January, 1754, and Major Washington made his report to Governor Dinwiddie, delivering also the letter of the French cominandant. The Council ordered the raising of two companies of men, by way of preparation to resist the encroachments of the French, now perceived to be assuming a hostile attitude toward the colonists. Major Washington was at once appointed to the command of these troops, and by way of informing the people of the prob able designs of the French, and exciting their indignation to the pitch of war, the Governor ordered the journal from which we have quoted a few passages, to be published entire, much against the inclination of the writer, who thought very poorly of it. It was reprinted in England. and attracted much attention there. The Governor's orders to the young commander and his subordinates were, "to drive away, kill, and destroy or seize as prisoners, all persons not the subjects of the king of Great Britain, who should attempt to settle or take possession of the lands on the Ohio River, or any of its tributaries."

But the country in general was not particularly well disposed towards the warlike manifestations planned by Governor Dinwiddie, who writes somewhat piteously to the Lords at home; "I am sorry to find them very much in a republican way of thinking." He persevered, how

ever, and enlistments went on; the forces were increased, and demands for aid made on the neighboring States. Washington's experience in raising and equipping troops without money commenced here; he writes from his head-quarters at Alexandria, to the Governor, that his men are much discouraged for want of pay, and that "many of them are without shoes or stockings, some without shirts, and not a few without coats or waistcoats." Washington was raised to the rank of lieutenant

colonel, second in command under Colonel' Fry, an excellent officer. Cannon and other military equipments, recently arrived from England, were sent to Alexandria for the use of the growing army. French aggressions on the Ohio precipitated hostilities somewhat. Some men who were building a fort were attacked by a thousand French under Captain Contrecœur, and forced to yield the ground, the French staying to finish the works, which they named Fort Duquesne, in compliment to the Governor of Canada. Colonel Washington occupied an outpost, much exposed, and his force was quite insufficient for any serious resistance; but he lost not a moment in pushing forward into the wilderness to clear and prepare a road-an effort which would at least give active business to his men, and keep off discontent and timidity. To all other hardships was superadded that of scanty fare, that least tolerable ill to the laborer. But the young chief thought there was "no such word as fail," for him, at least, and he tried to find an expeditious passage by the Youghiogany River, in the course of which he encountered rocks and shoals, and at length came to a fall, which rendered farther exploration impracticable. When he returned to the camp, he received a warning message from the Half-king importing that the French were marching towards him, determined upon an attack. On further information of the near approach of the enemy, Washington set off to join the Half-king, a task of no small difficulty, as the march was to be performed in the night, in a violent storm of rain, and through an almost trackless wilderness. That the state of affairs at this time was not wholly satisfactory may be judged from the following passage in a letter addressed by Colonel Washington to the Governor: "Giving up my commission is quite contrary to my intention. Nay, I ask it as a greater favor than any amongst the many I have received from your Honor, to confirm it to me. But let me serve voluntarily; then I will, with the greatest pleasure in life, devote my services to the expedition, without any other reward than the satisfaction of serving my country; but to be slaving dangerously for the shadow of pay, through woods, rocks, mountains-I would rather prefer the great toil of a daily laborer, and dig for a maintenance, provided I were reduced to the necessity, than serve upon such ignoble terms. I hope what I have said will not be taken amiss, for I really believe, were it as much in your power as it is in your inclination, we should be

treated as gentlemen and officers, and not have annexed to the most trifling pay that ever was given to English officers, the glorious allowance of soldiers' diet,a pound of pork, with bread in proportion, per day. Be the consequence what it will, I am determined not to leave the regiment, but to be among the last men that shall quit the Ohio."

A painful occurrence at this stage of the border war was the death of M. Jumonville, a French captain, who fell in an attack led by Washington himself, the whole circumstances of which have been strangely misrepresented by the French historians. They assert that Jumonville advanced in the pacific character of a messenger; Washington observes-" Thirtysix men would almost have been a retinue for a princely ambassador instead of a pelit. An ambassador has no need of spies; his character is always sacred. Since they had so good an intention, why should they remain two days within five miles of us, without giving me notice of the summons, or any thing that related to their embassy? They pretend

that they called to us as soon as we were discovered, which is absolutely false; for I was at the head of the party approaching them, and I can affirm that as soon as they saw us, they ran to their arms without calling, which I should have heard had they done so."

The short and simple account given by Washington to Governor Dinwiddie is this: "I set out with forty men before ten, and it was from that time until near sunrise before we reached the Indians' camp, having marched in small paths, through a heavy rain, and a night as dark as it is possible to conceive. We were frequently tumbling one over another, and often so lost that fifteen or twenty minutes' search would not find the path again.

"When we came to the Half-king, I counselled with him, and got his assent to go hand-in-hand and strike the French. Accordingly he, Monacawacha, and a few other Indians, set out with us, and when we came to the place where the troops were, the Half-king sent two Indians to follow the tracks and discover their lodgment, which they did, at a very obscure place, surrounded with rocks. I thereupon, in conjunction with the Half-king and Monacawacha, formed a disposition to attack them on all sides, which we accordingly did, and after an engagement of fifteen minutes, we killed ten, wounded one, and took twenty-one prisoners. Amongst those killed was M. Jumonville, the commander. The principal officers taken are

M. Drouillon and M. La Force, of whom your Honor has often heard me speak, as a bold enterprising man, and a person of great subtlety and cunning. These officers pretend they were coming on an embassy; but the absurdity of this pretext is too glaring, as you will see by the Instructions and Summons inclosed. Their instructions were to reconnoitre the country, roads, creeks, and the like, as far as the Potomac, which they were about to do. These enterprising men were purposely chosen out to procure intelligence, which they were to send back by some brisk despatches, with the mention of the day that they were to serve the summons, which could be with no other view than to get a sufficient reinforcement to fall upon us immediately after."

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History is really disgraced by the attempt to represent the death of the commander of such a party under such circumstances an assassination;" yet Mr. Sparks mentions MM. Flassan, Lacretelle, Montgaillard, and a recent writer in the Biographie Universelle, as only a few of the French historians that have fallen into

this gross error, the sole authority for which is a letter written by M. Contrecoeur to the Marquis Duquesne, which letter gives the Governor the report of a Canadian who ran away at the beginning of the skirmish, and the rumors gathered among the Indians.

Not content with this prosaic slander, M. Thomas wrote an epic (!) entitled Jumonville," the subject of which he states as, "L'Assassinat de M. Jumonville en Amerique, et la Vengeance de ce Meurtre," a poem which Zimmermann cites as a remarkable instance of the effect of national antipathy. "The preface," observes Mr. Sparks, "contains an exaggerated paraphrase of M. Contrecoeur's letter, as the groundwork of the author's poetical fabric. With the materials thus furnished, and the machinery of the deep and wild forests, the savages, the demon of battles and the ghost of Jumonville, his epic speedily assumes a tragic garb, and the scenes of horror and the cries of vengeance cease not till the poem closes."

Washington, with his usual self-abnegation in cases merely personal, never took the least pains to justify himself by declaring publicly the falsity of the stain thus sought to be fixed upon his character. He had the unqualified approbation of the authorities under whose orders he acted, and of the government at home, and he was content. Governor Dinwiddie wrote thus to Lord Albemarle: "The prisoners said they were come as an embassy from

the fort; but your Lordship knows that ambassadors do not come with such an armed force, without a trumpet or any other sign of friendship; nor can it be thought they were on an embassy, by staying so long reconnoitering our small camp, but more probably that they expected a reinforcement to cut them all off."

Washington's private journal of the affairs of the time, which was lost at the fatal defeat of General Braddock, was many years afterwards discovered in Paris, and found to confirm the statement given in his letter to the Governor. So it is to be hoped future French historians will be content at least to reduce the depth of color which their predecessors have thought suitable to this event, and allow the death of M. Jumonville to assume its true aspect and position, as one among the legitimate horrors which follow in the train of warhorrors which Washington was never known wilfully or carelessly to deepen.

It is most interesting to observe, in studying the career of Washingon from the very beginning, how entirely he was a man of peace, though so much of his life was passed in making war, and that with an iron will and unflinching thorough ness. He seems to have done his duty in the character of a soldier just as coolly and regularly as he did it in that of a surveyor. He knew his work, and he set about it with all his powers of mind and body, but we never feel for a moment that it was work that he loved. He loved rural life, the occupations of the farm, the sports of the field, the enjoyments of the fireside. Much has been said of his reserve, as if it were exclusiveness; but his letters and his constant home practice show, conclusively, that no man depended more upon friendship, or found society more necessary to his enjoyment. He kept only his cares to himself, and those only when to impart them would have been injurious or unprofitable. As he grew older, weighty business made him more grave and silent; but we should always carry with us, in attempting to appreciate his character as a man, the idea of him that we gather from the record of his earlier days; the kindliness, the sociability, the generous confidence, the courageous candor that marked him then, and evidently formed. part of the very structure of his being. Whoever can read his journals and early letters without imbibing an affection as well as reverence for him, must have sat down to the task with enormous prepos

sessions, derived from the accounts of his later life.

Horace Walpole, that inveterate pointer of anecdotes, says "In the express which Major Washington despatched on the preceding little victory, he concluded with these words: 'I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound.' On hearing of this, the king said, sensibly, 'He would not say so if he had been used to hear many' Mr. Sparks remarks that the despatch communicated by Major Washington to Governor Dinwiddie, giving an account of the encounter with Jumonville, contains nothing about the whistling of bullets, nor is such a sentiment contained in any of his letters that have been preserved. "As the writer refers to no authority, it may be presumed that he had none but rumor, either for the saying of Washington or for the more sensible reply of the king. Yet this anecdote is not wholly without foundation, if we may rely on a statement of Gordon, who says'A gentleman who had heard the Reverend Mr. Davies relate that Col. Washington had mentioned he knew of no music so pleasing as the whistling of bullets, being alone in conversation with him in Cambridge, asked him whether it was as he had related. The General answered, "If I said so, it was when I was young."

In his maturer years, the report of a fowling-piece was the only warlike sound that had any music for his ears, and he loved the lowing of kine, and the crackling of a bright wood fire better still. Not a letter of his that contains any allusion to his private and personal tastes but breathes the very spirit of a love of retirement and domestic repose. In 1790 somebody cavilled at the etiquette observed at his levees in New-York, to which he replies: "That I have not been able to make bows to the taste of poor Colonel B. (who, by the by, I believe, never saw one of them), is to be regretted, especially, too, as upon those occasions they were indiscriminately bestowed, and the best I was master of. Would it not have been better to throw the veil of charity over them, ascribing their stiffness to the effects of age, or to the unskilfulness of my teacher, rather than to pride and dignity of office, which, God knows, has no charms for me? For I can truly say I had rather be at Mount Vernon, with a friend or two about me, than to be attended at the seat of government by the officers of state and the representatives of every power in Europe."