favorable report greatly stimulated interest in the Western country.
In his travels, he met many Scotch-Irish fur-traders who had passed
into the West through the mountain valleys of Pennsylvania, Virginia,
and the Carolinas. His negotiations with the natives were of great
value to the English cause.

It was early seen, by English and French alike, that an immense
advantage would accrue to the nation first in possession of what is
now the site of Pittsburg, the meeting-place of the Monongahela and
Alleghany rivers to form the Ohio--the "Forks of the Ohio," as it was
then called. In the spring of 1753, a French force occupied the new
fifteen-mile portage route between Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.) and French
Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany. On the banks of French Creek they
built Fort Le Boeuf, a stout log-stockade. It had been planned to
erect another fort at the Forks of the Ohio, one hundred and twenty
miles below; but disease in the camp prevented the completion of the
scheme.

What followed is familiar to all who have taken any interest whatever
in Western history. In November, Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent
one of his major-generals, young George Washington, with Gist as a
companion, to remonstrate with the French at Le Boeuf for occupying
land "so notoriously known to be the property of the Crown of Great
Britain." The French politely turned the messengers back. In the
following April (1754), Washington set out with a small command, by
the way of Will's Creek, to forcibly occupy the Forks. His advance
party were building a fort there, when the French appeared and easily
drove them off. Then followed Washington's defeat at Great Meadows
(July 4). The French were now supreme at their new Fort Duquesne.
The following year, General Braddock set out from Virginia, also by
Nemacolin's Path; but, on that fateful ninth of July, fell in the
slaughter-pen which had been set for him at Turtle Creek by the
Indians of the Upper Lakes, under the leadership of a French
fur-trader from far-off Wisconsin.

From the time of Braddock's defeat until the close of the war, French
traders, with savage allies, poured the vials of their wrath upon the
encroaching settlements of the English backwoodsmen. Nemacolin's Path,
now known as Braddock's Road, made for the Indians of the Ohio an
easy pathway to the English borders of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
Maryland. In the parallel valleys of the Alleghanies was waged a
partisan warf