ot built, nor did
Pean descend the Ohio. Fevers, lung diseases, and scurvy made such
deadly havoc among troops and Canadians, that the dying Marin saw with
bitterness that his work must be left half done. Three hundred of the
best men were kept to garrison Forts Presquisle and Le Boeuf; and then,
as winter approached, the rest were sent back to Montreal. When they
arrived, the Governor was shocked at their altered looks. "I reviewed
them, and could not help being touched by the pitiable state to which
fatigues and exposures had reduced them. Past all doubt, if these
emaciated figures had gone down the Ohio as intended, the river would
have been strewn with corpses, and the evil-disposed savages would not
have failed to attack the survivors, seeing that they were but
spectres."[132]

[Footnote 131: _Rapports de Conseils avec les Sauvages a Montreal,
Juillet, 1753. Duquesne au Ministre, 31 Oct. 1753_. Letter of Dr.
Shuckburgh in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VI. 806.]

[Footnote 132: _Duquesne au Ministre, 29 Nov. 1753_. On this expedition,
compare the letter of Duquesne in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 255, and the
deposition of Stephen Coffen, _Ibid._, VI. 835.]

Legardeur de Saint-Pierre arrived at the end of autumn, and made his
quarters at Fort Le Boeuf. The surrounding forests had dropped their
leaves, and in gray and patient desolation bided the coming winter.
Chill rains drizzled over the gloomy "clearing," and drenched the
palisades and log-built barracks, raw from the axe. Buried in the
wilderness, the military exiles resigned themselves as they might to
months of monotonous solitude; when, just after sunset on the eleventh
of December, a tall youth came out of the forest on horseback, attended
by a companion much older and rougher than himself, and followed by
several Indians and four or five white men with packhorses. Officers
from the fort went out to meet the strangers; and, wading through mud
and sodden snow, they entered at the gate. On the next day the young
leader of the party, with the help of an interpreter, for he spoke no
French, had an interview with the commandant, and gave him a letter from
Governor Dinwiddie. Saint-Pierre and the officer next in rank, who knew
a little English, took it to another room to study it at their ease; and
in it, all unconsciously, they read a name destined to stand one of the
noblest in the annals of mankind; for it introduced Major George
Washington, Adjutant-General of the Virginia m