England, Vol. XXI., pp.
478-491.)]

[Footnote 225: "They had been incessantly making settlements upon the
English property since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and at last they
made a settlement on the western part of Virginia, upon the River Ohio.
Mr. Dinwiddie (Governor of Virginia) having intelligence of this, sent
an officer, Major Washington, with a letter to the French commandant
there, requiring him to desist, and with orders, if possible, to bring
the Indians over to the British interest. Washington had but indifferent
success with the Indians; and when he arrived with some of the Indians
at the French settlements, he found the French by no means inclined to
give over their undertaking, and that the Indians, notwithstanding all
their fair promises, were much more in their interest than in that of
England. Upon further inquiry it was found that the Indians called the
Six Nations, who, by the treaty of Utrecht, were acknowledged to be
subject to Great Britain, had been entirely debauched by the French, who
had likewise found means to bring over to their interest those vast
tracts that lie along the great lakes and rivers to the west of the
Apalachian (or Allegany) mountains.

"Having thus got the friendship of those Indians, they next contrived
how they could cut them off from all communication with the English, and
for that purpose they seized the persons and effects of all the English
whom they found trading with the Indians; and they erected a chain of
forts from Canada to Mississippi, to prevent all future communication
between the English and those Indians; at the same time destroying such
of the Indians as discovered any affection or regard for the British
subjects: so that in a very few years all the eastern as well as the
western colonies of Great Britain were in danger of being
ruined."--_Ib._, pp. 290, 291.

"Though the several provinces belonging to Great Britain, in the
neighbourhood of the French encroachments, raised both men and money
against them, yet the forms of their legal proceedings in their
assemblies were so dilatory that the French always had the start of
them, and they surprised a place called Log's Town, belonging to the
Virginians, on the Ohio. This was a place of great importance, and the
French made themselves masters of the block-house and the truck-house,
with skins and other commodities to the amount of L20,000, besides
cutting off all the English traders in those parts but two,