ed an armed expedition into the very
heart of the border wilderness, and began with the attack on Jumonville
and his party the war that ended on the Plains of Abraham.

In 1750 the Ohio Company, formed for the purpose of colonizing the
country on the river of that name, surveyed its banks as far as the site
of Louisville. The French, resolved to defend their title to the region
west of the mountains, crossed Lake Erie, and established posts at
Presque Isle, at Le Boeuf, and at Venango on the Allegheny River.
Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent a messenger to warn the French not
to advance. He selected for this task a young man named George
Washington, a land surveyor, who, notwithstanding his youth, had made a
good impression as a person of capacity and courage, well-fitted for the
arduous and delicate undertaking. Washington well performed his task
although the French, as might have been expected, paid no heed to his
warning. In the spring of 1754, a party of English began to build a fort
where Pittsburg now stands. The French drove them off and erected Fort
Duquesne. A regiment of Virginia troops was already marching toward the
place. Upon the death of its leading officer, George Washington, the
lieutenant-colonel, took command. Washington, overwhelmed by the superior
numbers of the French, was compelled to surrender, and the French, for
the time, were masters of the Ohio.

This reverse did not diminish the esteem in which Washington was held by
the Virginians, and by those of the mother country who came in contact
with him. When General Edward Braddock, in 1755, started on his ill-fated
expedition for the capture of Duquesne with a force of about two thousand
men, including the British regulars and the colonial militia, Washington
accompanied the British general as one of his staff. Braddock was a
gallant soldier, but imperious, and self-willed, and he looked almost
with contempt upon the American troops. He made a forced march with
twelve hundred men in order to surprise the French at Duquesne before
they could receive reinforcements. Colonel Dunbar followed with the
remainder of the army and the wagon-train. It was a delightful July
morning when the British soldiers and colonists crossed a ford of the
Monongahela, and advanced in solid platoons along the southern bank of
the stream in the direction of the fort. Washington advised a disposition
of the troops more in accordance with forest warfare, but Braddock
ha