over on the ice which had formed and went directly to Frazier's cabin. There they arrived December 29th. On the first day of the new year, 1754, Washington set out for Virginia on the little path over which he had come out. On the sixth he met seventeen horses loaded with materials and stores "for a fort at the Fork of the Ohio." Governor Dinwiddie, indefatigable if nothing else, had commissioned Captain Trent to raise a company of a hundred men to erect a fort on the Ohio for the protection of the Ohio Company.
On the 16th of January the youthful envoy rode again into Williamsburg, one month from the day he left Fort La Bœuf. St. Pierre's reply to Governor Dinwiddie's letter read as follows:
"Sir,
"As I have the Honour of commanding here in Chief, Mr. Washington delivered me the Letter which you wrote to the Commandant of the French Troops.
"I should have been glad that you had given him Orders, or that he had been inclined to proceed to Canada to see our General; to whom it better belongs than to
