anliness, their grief, and their idleness
caused the death of many. They were forced to eat boiled leather
during the greater part of the winter, and to wait for spring in the
hope that their condition would be bettered. On this point they were
deceived."[24]

"To supplement a miserable daily ration of four ounces of bread and
horseflesh," says another writer, "they were obliged to seek scraps
in the gutters; and those who survived starvation were brought low
with a virulent smallpox, which carried off whole families in its
loathsome tumbril."

[Footnote 24: Archives of Nova Scotia.]

* * * * *

In the meantime, a series of events had happened in the Ohio valley
which set the New World on fire. Celoron de Bienville had indeed
staked out his boundary line, but the new Governor of Quebec, the
Marquis Duquesne, saw clearly that a line of bayonets was the only
limit which English expansionists would respect. Accordingly, a strong
French force marched into the troublesome valley, and established
themselves at a new post called Fort Le Boeuf.

The report of this incursion was evil news for Governor Dinwiddie of
Virginia, the most diligent and watchful of the thirteen governors of
the English colonies. Having never ceased to regard Lake Erie as a
northern boundary of British territory, this latest invasion on the
part of the French was to him beyond endurance, and he forthwith
despatched the Adjutant-General of the Virginia Militia to deliver
England's protest to the French commander. The messenger was a tall
handsome youth of twenty-one, and the message was the first important
commission of George Washington.

[Illustration: Plan of the
CITY OF QUEBEC 1759]

[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SIR ISAAC BARRE
(Paymaster of Wolfe's Forces)]

In spite of the studied courtesy of his reception by Legardeur de
Saint-Pierre, the English envoy saw the hopelessness of his errand,
and hastened back to Williamsburg with his report. Dinwiddie thereupon
resolved to meet force with force. Although he scarcely persuaded the
disunited colonies to take a serious view of the French invasion, he
was presently able to send George Washington back again into the Ohio
valley at the head of a company of regulars and three hundred
soldiers of the Old Dominion.

Meanwhile the French had seized an English trading-post at the
junction of the Ohio and Monongahela rivers, and named it Fort
Duquesne. This post was Washington's imm