, but tried at the same time to win his Indian friends
away from him.

The return journey was terrible. The horses had become so weak that
they were useless except as light pack animals. The little party
struggled along on foot. Washington with one companion went on ahead.
It was the dead of winter, but when they reached the Ohio River, they
found that instead of its being frozen solid, as they had hoped, it was
a turbulent mass of tossing cakes of ice.

"There was no way of getting over," writes Washington in his journal,
"but on a raft, which we set about, with but one poor hatchet, and
finished just after sun-setting. This was a 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 setting-pole 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 of water; but I
fortunately saved myself by catching hold of one of the raft-logs.
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 was shut up so hard that we
found no difficulty in getting off the island on the ice in the
morning, and went to Mr. Frazier's."

Here they succeeded in procuring horses, and in a few days more, Major
Washington handed in his report to the Governor at Williamsburg.

This report stirred the Virginia House of Burgesses to action. It
showed that the whole western frontier was imperilled. One of
Washington's recommendations, that a fort be built at the fork of the
Ohio, was put into effect at once; and a Captain Trent was sent out
with some woodsmen to begin its construction. But before the fort was
completed a force of French descended upon it and captured it. Near
its site they themselves built a larger one, which they called Fort
Duquesne--the site of the later city of Pittsburgh.

This action on the part of the French was equivalent to a declaration
of war. It was really the beginning of the Seven Years' War between
England and France, for the control of America--a drama in which
Washington was to have no little part.

When