gathered round their
young commander, as, morning and evening, he kneeled in prayer before
the Giver of all good, beseeching aid and protection, and giving
thanks.

As if to put his manhood and patience to a still severer test, there
came to the fort about this time an independent company of one hundred
North Carolinians, headed by one Capt. Mackay, who refused to serve
under him as his superior officer. As his reason for this conduct,
Mackay argued that he held a royal commission (that is to say, had
been made a captain by the King of England), which made him equal in
rank, if not superior, to Washington, who held only a provincial
commission, or had been made a colonel by the Governor of Virginia.
This, in part, was but too true; and it had been a source of
dissatisfaction to Washington, that the rank and services of colonial
officers should be held at a cheaper rate than the same were valued at
in the royal army. It wounded his honest, manly pride, and offended
his high sense of justice; and he had already resolved in his own mind
to quit such inglorious service, as soon as he could do so without
injury to the present campaign, or loss of honor to himself. To most
men, the lofty airs and pretensions of Capt. Mackay and his
Independents would have been unbearable; but he kept his temper
unruffled, and, with a prudence beyond his years, forbore to do or say
any thing that would lead to an angry outbreak between them; and as
they chose to encamp outside the fort, and have separate guards, he
deemed it wisest not to trouble himself about them, only so far as
might concern their common safety.

Days, and even weeks, had now passed away, and still no enemy had come
to offer him battle. His men were becoming restless from inaction; and
the example of the troublesome Independents had already begun to stir
up discontent among them, which threatened, if not checked in season,
to end in downright insubordination. As the surest remedy for these
evils, Washington resolved to push forward with the road in the
direction of Fort Duquesne, and carry the war into the enemy's own
country. Requesting Capt. Mackay to guard the fort during his absence,
he set out with his entire force of three hundred men, and again began
the toilsome work of cutting a road through the wilderness. The
difficulties they had now to overcome were even greater than those
which beset them at the outset of their pioneering. The mountains
were higher, the swa