oah. It was not until 1736
that Col. William Mayo, in laying out the boundaries of Lord Fairfax's
generous estate, discovered in the Alleghanies the head-spring of the
Potomac, where ten years later was planted the famous "Fairfax Stone,"
the southwest point of the boundary between Virginia and Maryland.
That very same year (1746), M. de Lery, chief engineer of New France,
went with a detachment of troops from Lake Erie to Chautauqua Lake,
and proceeded thence by Conewango Creek and Alleghany River to the
Ohio, which he carefully surveyed down to the mouth of the Great
Miami.

Affairs moved slowly in those days. New France was corrupt and weak,
and the English colonists, unaided by the home government, were not
strong. For many years, nothing of importance came out of this rivalry
of French and English in the Ohio Valley, save the petty quarrels of
fur-traders, and the occasional adventure of some Englishman taken
prisoner by Indians in a border foray, and carried far into the
wilderness to meet with experiences the horror of which, as preserved
in their published narratives, to this day causes the blood of the
reader to curdle.

Now and then, there were voluntary adventurers into these strange
lands. Such were John Howard, John Peter Salling, and two other
Virginians who, the story goes, went overland (1740 or 1741) under
commission of their inquisitive governor, to explore the country to
the Mississippi. They went down Coal and Wood's Rivers to the Ohio,
which in Salling's journal is called the "Alleghany." Finally, a party
of French, negroes, and Indians took them prisoners and carried them
to New Orleans, where on meager fare they were held in prison for
eighteen months. They escaped at last, and had many curious adventures
by land and sea, until they reached home, from which they had been
absent two years and three months. There are now few countries on the
globe where a party of travelers could meet with adventures such as
these.

At last, the plot thickened; the tragedy was hastened to a close.
France now formally asserted her right to all countries drained by
streams emptying into the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the
Mississippi. This vast empire would have extended from the comb of
the Rockies on the west--discovered in 1743 by the brothers La
Verendrye--to the crest of the Appalachians on the east, thus
including the western part of New York and New England. The narrow
strip of the Atlantic coast al