n the French notes. They are
of no use to me separated, nor will they, I believe, be of any to you;
yet I send them unconnected and incoherent as they were taken, for I
have no opportunity to correct them.

In regard to the journal, I can only observe in general, that I kept
no regular one during that expedition: rough minutes of occurrences I
certainly took, and find them as certainly and strangely
metamorphosed--some parts left out which I remember were entered, and
many things added that never were thought of; the names of men and
things egregiously miscalled; and the whole of what I saw Englished,
is very incorrect and nonsensical:--yet, I will not pretend to say
that the little body who brought it to me, has not made a literal
translation, and a good one.

Short as my time is, I can not help remarking on Villiers' account of
the battle of, and transactions at the Meadows, as it is very
extraordinary, and not less erroneous than inconsistent. He says the
French received the first fire. It is well known that we received it
at six hundred paces distance. He also says, our fears obliged us to
retreat in the most disorderly manner after the capitulation. How is
this consistent with his other account? He acknowledges that we
sustained the attack, warmly, from ten in the morning until dark, and
that he called first to parley, which strongly indicates that we were
not totally absorbed in fear. If the gentleman in his account had
adhered to the truth, he must have confessed, that we looked upon his
offer to parley as an artifice to get into and examine our trenches,
and refused on this account, until they desired an officer might be
sent to them, and gave their parole for his safe return. He might
also, if he had been as great a lover of the truth as he was of vain
glory, have said, that we absolutely refused their first and second
proposals, and would consent to capitulate on no other terms than such
as we obtained. That we were wilfully, or ignorantly deceived by our
interpreter in regard to the word _assassination_, I do aver, and will
to my dying moment; so will every officer that was present. The
interpreter was a Dutchman, little acquainted with the English tongue,
therefore might not advert to the tone and meaning of the word in
English; but, whatever his motives were for so doing, certain it is,
he called it the _death_, or the _loss_ of the Sieur Jumonville. So we
received and so we understood it, until to our gr