to visit and deliver a letter to the
commandant of the French forces on the Ohio, and set out on the
intended journey on the same day: the next, I arrived at
Fredericksburg, and engaged Mr. Jacob Vanbraam to be my French
interpreter, and proceeded with him to Alexandria, where we provided
necessaries. From thence we went to Winchester, and got baggage,
horses, &c. and from thence we pursued the new road to Wills' Creek,
where we arrived the 14th November.

Here I engaged Mr. Gist to pilot us out, and also hired four others as
servitors, Barnaby Currin, and John M'Quire, Indian traders, Henry
Steward, and William Jenkins; and in company with those persons left
the inhabitants the next day.

The excessive rains and vast quantity of snow which had fallen,
prevented our reaching Mr. Frazier's, an Indian trader, at the mouth
of Turtle creek, on Monongahela river, until Thursday the 22d. We were
informed here, that expresses had been sent a few days before to the
traders down the river, to acquaint them with the French general's
death, and the return of the major part of the French army into winter
quarters.

The waters were quite impassable without swimming our horses, which
obliged us to get the loan of a canoe from Frazier, and to send
Barnaby Currin and Henry Steward down the Monongahela, with our
baggage, to meet us at the forks of Ohio, about ten miles; there, to
cross the Alleghany.

As I got down before the canoe, I spent some time in viewing the
rivers, and the land in the fork, which I think extremely well
situated for a fort, as it has the absolute command of both rivers.
The land at the point is twenty, or twenty-five feet above the common
surface of the water; and a considerable bottom of flat, well timbered
land all around it very convenient for building. The rivers are each a
quarter of a mile or more across, and run here very nearly at right
angles; Alleghany, bearing northeast; and Monongahela, southeast. The
former of these two is a very rapid and swift running water, the other
deep and still, without any perceptible fall.

About two miles from this, on the southeast side of the river, at the
place where the Ohio company intended to erect a fort, lives Shingiss,
king of the Delawares. We called upon him, to invite him to council at
the Loggstown.

As I had taken a good deal of notice yesterday of the situation at the
fork, my curiosity led me to examine this more particularly, and I
think it greatl