uis de la Jonquiere, governor of New France,
having ordered me to watch that the English make no treaty in the Ohio
country, I have signified to the traders of your government to retire.
You are not ignorant that all these lands belong to the King of
France, and that the English have no right to trade in them." He
concluded by reiterating the threat made two years previously by
Celeron de Bienville against all intruding fur traders. In the
meantime, in the face of all these protests and menaces, Mr. Gist,
under sanction of the Virginia Legislature, proceeded in the same year
to survey the lands within the grant of the Ohio company, lying on the
south side of the Ohio river, as far down as the great Kanawha.

The French now prepared for hostile contingencies. They launched an
armed vessel of unusual size on Lake Ontario; fortified their
trading-house at Niagara; strengthened their outposts, and advanced
others on the upper waters of the Ohio. A stir of warlike preparation
was likewise to be observed among the British colonies. It was evident
that the adverse claims to the disputed territories, if pushed home,
could only be settled by the stern arbitrament of the sword.

In Virginia, especially, the war spirit was manifest. The province was
divided into military districts, each having an adjutant-general, with
the rank of major, and the pay of one hundred and fifty pounds a year,
whose duty was to attend to the organization and equipment of the
militia. Such an appointment was sought by Lawrence Washington for his
brother George, who set about preparing himself, with his usual method
and assiduity, for his new duties. Virginia had among its floating
population some military relics of the late Spanish war. Among these
was a certain Adjutant Muse, a Westmoreland volunteer, who had served
with Lawrence Washington in the campaigns in the West Indies. He now
undertook to instruct his brother George in the art of war; lent him
treatises on military tactics; put him through the manual exercise,
and gave him some idea of evolutions in the field. Another of
Lawrence's campaigning comrades was Jacob Van Braam, a Dutchman by
birth, who had been in the British army, but was now out of service,
and, professing to be a complete master of fence, recruited his
slender purse in this time of military excitement, by giving the
Virginian youth lessons in the sword exercise. Under the instructions
of these veterans Mount Vernon, from being a