western forests, to sleep on the ground in the dead of winter, wade in rivers running with ice, and face a hundred known and a thousand unknown risks.
"Faith, you're a brave lad," broke out the old Scotch governor, "and, if you play your cards well, you shall have no cause to repent your bargain," and Major Washington departed from Williamsburg on the last day of October but one, 1753. The first sentence in the Journal he now began suggests his zeal and promptness: "I was commissioned and appointed by the Honourable Robert Dinnwiddie, Esq; Governor, &c of Virginia, to visit and deliver a Letter to the Commandant of the French Forces on the Ohio, and set out on the intended Journey the same Day." At Fredericksburg he employed his old fencing tutor Jacob van Braam as his interpreter and pushed on westward over the trail used by the Ohio Company to Wills Creek (Cumberland, Maryland) on the upper Potomac, where he arrived November 14.
Wills Creek was the last Virginian outpost, where Fort Cumberland was soon erected. Already the Ohio Company had
