ilitia.[133]

[Footnote 133: _Journal of Major Washington. Journal of Mr. Christopher
Gist._]

Dinwiddie, jealously watchful of French aggression, had learned through
traders and Indians that a strong detachment from Canada had entered the
territories of the King of England, and built forts on Lake Erie and on
a branch of the Ohio. He wrote to challenge the invasion and summon the
invaders to withdraw; and he could find none so fit to bear his message
as a young man of twenty-one. It was this rough Scotchman who launched
Washington on his illustrious career.

Washington set out for the trading station of the Ohio Company on Will's
Creek; and thence, at the middle of November, struck into the wilderness
with Christopher Gist as a guide, Vanbraam, a Dutchman, as French
interpreter, Davison, a trader, as Indian interpreter, and four woodsmen
as servants. They went to the forks of the Ohio, and then down the river
to Logstown, the Chiningue of Celoron de Bienville. There Washington had
various parleys with the Indians; and thence, after vexatious delays, he
continued his journey towards Fort Le Boeuf, accompanied by the friendly
chief called the Half-King and by three of his tribesmen. For several
days they followed the traders' path, pelted with unceasing rain and
snow, and came at last to the old Indian town of Venango, where French
Creek enters the Alleghany. Here there was an English trading-house; but
the French had seized it, raised their flag over it, and turned it into
a military outpost.[134] Joncaire was in command, with two subalterns;
and nothing could exceed their civility. They invited the strangers to
supper; and, says Washington, "the wine, as they dosed themselves pretty
plentifully with it, soon banished the restraint which at first appeared
in their conversation, and gave a license to their tongues to reveal
their sentiments more freely. They told me that it was their absolute
design to take possession of the Ohio, and, by G----, they would do it;
for that although they were sensible the English could raise two men for
their one, yet they knew their motions were too slow and dilatory to
prevent any undertaking of theirs."[135]

[Footnote 134: Marin had sent sixty men in August to seize the house,
which belonged to the trader Fraser. _Depeches de Duquesne_. They
carried off two men whom they found here. Letter of Fraser in _Colonial
Records of Pa._, V. 659.]

[Footnote 135: _Journal of Washington_, as