to you and the other officers. However, as you seem so earnest to go I now give you leave." 15

So Washington went and was received with respectful attention by the Earl, who decided that the next attack on the French would be made in the North. Virginia had had her chance and her great road to the Ohio had led to deathless regret.

Fort Cumberland was turned over to Maryland and Colonel Washington's dear enemy, Captain Dagworthy, put in charge of it as soon as Washington should march out.16 This must have been an exquisitely nauseating pill for Washington to swallow. He was now ordered to a smaller parish with nothing much to do but sit and watch for news from the north.

His hopeless prospect led him to review his futile past in a letter to a London merchant, Richard Washington, who dealt in indentured servants and tobacco:

"I have been posted for twenty months past upon our cold and barren frontiers, to perform, I think I may say, impossibilities; that is, to protect from the cruel incursions of a crafty, savage enemy a line of inhabitants, of more than three hundred and fifty miles in extent, with a force inadequate to the task. By this means I am become in a manner an exile, and seldom informed of those opportunities, which I might otherwise embrace, of corresponding with my friends."

He thought it would be a good time to attack the French while their attention and forces were distracted to the north by Lord Loudoun's attack, but he had his thoughts for his reward.

"I am so little acquainted with the business relative to my private affairs, that I can scarce give you any information concerning it. I know that I ought to have some tobacco, and that it ought to be shipped. whatever goods you

may send me, where the prices are not absolutely limited, you will let them be fashionable, neat, and good in their several kinds." 17

He sat at his doleful post awaiting the worst. He told one man that his men would be no more "than a breakfast to the French and their Indians.” 18

They were taking even his perquisites away. He was receiving as colonel "30 shillings, per day, pay, and two per cent commissions for examining, settling, and paying off accompts." This was thought to be high and he pleaded that the Governor should not, having promised "to better my command, render it worse by taking away the only perquisite I have; and the only thing that enables me to support the expence which unavoidably attends my Table.” 1o

The governor took away his two percent and gave him two hundred pounds a year for his table and extras.

He was relieved of the management of Indian affairs. He was also placed in subordination to Colonel Stanwix, whom Loudoun put in command of the Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia troops.

An interesting evidence of his tormented frame of mind has recently come to light. In 1920, Mr. Victor Hugo Paltsits, keeper of the manuscripts at the New York Public Library, on looking over a small memorandum book (called "A Roll of the Artificers . . . under the command of Captain William Peachy with an account of their Lost Time”) discovered that most of it was filled with memoranda in the handwriting of George Washington-the so-called round hand that he used between 1750 and 1760. Worthington C. Ford verified the documents and they were published in the Bulletin of the Library.20

Comparisons with his correspondence showed that this little book contained his reminders of letters to be written and errands to be done; as well as a list of the pedigrees,