will be the next reward to British pay, for as my Services so far as I have knowledge, will equal those of the best Officer, I make it a point of Hon'r [not?] to serve for less and accept a medium.

"Nevertheless, I have communicated your Honour's Sentiments to them; and as far as I could put on the Hipocrite, set forth the advantages that may accrue, and advised them to accept the Terms, as a refusal might reflect dishonour on their character, leaving it to the world to assign what reasons they please for quitting the Service. . . . They have promised to consider of it, and give your Honour an

answer.

"I was not ignorant of the allow'e which Colo. Fry has for his Table, but being a depend't there myself, deprives me of the pleasure of inviting an Officer or Friend, which to me w❜ld be more agreeable than the Nick Nacks I shall meet with there.

"And here I cannot forbear answering one thing more in your Honour's Letter on this head, which (too) is more fully express'd in a paragraph of Colo. Fairfax's to me, as follows: 'If on the British Establishment Officers are allow'd more Pay, the Regimentals they are oblig'd annually to furnish, their necessary Table and other Incidents being consider'd, little or no savings will be their Portion.

"If they don't save much, they have the enjoyment of their Pay, which we neither have in one sense nor the other. We are debarr'd the pleasure of good Living, which, Sir, (I dare say, with me you will concur) to one who has always been used to it, must go somewhat hard to be confin'd to a little salt provision and water, and do duty, hard, laborious duty, that is almost inconsistent with that of a Soldier, and yet, the same Reductions as if we were allow'd luxuriously. "My Pay, according to the British Establish't and common exchange, is near 22s. p'r Day, in the R'm of that, ye

Committee (for I can't, in ye least, imagine y'r H'r had any h'd in it) has provided (12s. 6d.) so long as ye Service requires me; whereas one-half of ye other is ascertain❜d to British Officers forever. Now, if we sh'd be fortunate enough to drive the French from Ohio-as far as your Honour w'd please have them sent to-in any short time, our Pay will not be sufficient to discharge our first expences. ...

"The motives that lead me here were pure and noble. I had no view of acquisition but that of Honour, by serving faithfully my King and Country." 17

This is not the Washington that is usually pictured. But there he had to sit in his tent, and spend his precious hours writing about his own and his officers' money, while the French closed in upon him.

In a letter of his that crossed Dinwiddie's rebuke about the pay-problem, Washington had enclosed a letter from the Half-King, written for him by a Trader. It is so beautiful a piece of backwoods literature as to constitute almost a puzzle. This is the Half-King's warning to "the first of His Majesty's Commanding Officers":

"To the forist, his Majestie's Commander Offwerses-to hom this

may concern:

"On acc't of a freench armey to meat Miger Georg Wassionton "ther for my Brotheres I deisir you to beawar of them for deisin'd to "strik ye forist Englsh they see ten deays since they marchd I cannot "tell what nomber the half King and the rest of the Chiefs will be "with you in five dayes to consel, no more at present but give my "serves to my Brothers the English.

"THE HALF-KING,' "JOHN DAVISON." 18

Enclosing this with a smile at its bad spelling, Washington went on to say that he had already retreated to Great Meadows as "a convenient spott" and "made a good In

trenchment, and by clearing ye Bushes out of these Meadows, prepar'd a charming field for an Encounter."

He was sending out scouts on wagon horses and was alarmed one night by noises that kept them under arms from two A. M. to near sunrise: "We conceive it was our own Men, as 6 of them Deserted, but cant be certain whether it was them, or other Enemys; be it as it will, they were fired at by the Centrys."

Gist arrived the next morning with news of a detachment of French that he estimated at fifty men, under the command of Monsieur La Force. Gist had seen them within five miles of Washington's camp. Washington promptly sent seventy-five of his men in pursuit, but they were not overtaken.

He sent his report to Dinwiddie by the hand of Gist, and repeated his prayer for goods to give the Indians to offset the generosity of the French, "I really think, was 5 or 600 Pounds worth of proper Goods sent, it w'd tend more to our Interest than so many thousands given in a Lump at a Treaty." 19

He had been obliged to pay for what rum he had given them, but could not afford it any more. Again he is seen taking from his own slender purse money that should have been furnished him by the state.

Two days later he wrote the long outpouring about pay already quoted, and added to it a slightly longer account of his first skirmish.

And it was a victory!

Little did he dream that it was to earn him ridicule and infamy abroad, and bring about a war in Europe that should last for seven years.

N

VIII

HE WINS HIS FIRST VICTORY

OTHING could be finer than the resolution and courage with which Washington awaited his doom, and nothing could have been worse than the spot he selected for his sacrifice.

In the War of 1812 an American general surrendered a fine fortress to an inferior number of the enemy. But he was sick and old. Washington, young and ignorant of military engineering, might far better have trusted to bushfighting methods with trees for individual fortresses, than have huddled his flock into the little trap where his Virginians and North Carolinians could not stand off twice their number of French and Indians for more than one long rainy afternoon.

1

Following many harsh critics of Washington's own day, Professor Reuben Gold Thwaites says of "the buckskingeneral'-as the French sneeringly called him," and the spot he chose for a fort: "The place was unfit for defence, for on three sides higher ground, heavily forested, approached closely to the stockade." General Bradley T. Johnson 2 says: "The locality was bad: it was too far out from his supports. The topography was worse. General Sharpe, of Maryland, a soldier of experience, of courage, and sense, criticised the whole performance with remorseless severity.' Still, every one must learn, and it was Washington's sad lot to be educated in the rough school of reality.

Gist had hardly left Washington on his way to the Governor, when there came at about nine o'clock at night an

"express" from the Half-King, who was encamped with a few Indians about six miles away.

The Half-King announced, as Washington reports, that he "had seen the Tract of two French Men X'ing the Road, and beliv'd ye whole body were lying not far off, as he had an acc't of that Number passing Mr. Gist." "

This dreary forested hillside fastness drenched with a night rain was to become the scene of much tragic history. The Great Meadows lie just over the border of Pennsylvania close to the Maryland line, near the town now called Confluence.

They are described by Hulbert * as "two large basins, the smaller lying directly westward of the larger and connected with it by a narrow neck of swampy ground. . . . The natural intrenchments or depressions behind which Washington huddled his army . were at the eastern edge of

the western basin."

The Indians had traced the French to a "low obscure place" where they had built a little hut for shelter from the rain in the lee of a precipice on the other side of Laurel Hill. The seventy-five men that Washington sent out to thresh the woods for them had not yet returned, nor had they seen the French or been seen by them. But the HalfKing's Indians had followed their "tracts" and Washington resolved to jump them at dawn. He decided to lead the night-foray in person and strengthen his troops with the Half-King's men. But let him write his own history of this morning of May 28, 1754, as he wrote it to Dinwiddie: 5

"I set out with 40 Men before 10, and was from that time till near Sun rise before we reach'd the Indian's Camp, hav'g March'd in small Path, a heavy Rain, and Night as Dark as it is possible to conceive; we were frequently tumbling one over another, and often so lost that 15 or 20 minutes search would not find the path again.