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tauqua pass. At the northern end of the portage he built Fort Presque Isle and at its southern extremity Fort Le Bœuf.^[1] The arrival of the French upon the headwaters of the Allegheny will forever be remembered by the new and significant name Washington now gave Rivière aux Bœufs—which the stream still bears—French Creek. Marin, who hurried on down the Allegheny building Forts Machault (Venango) at the junction of Rivière aux Bœufs and the Allegheny, and Duquesne at the junction of Allegheny and Monongahela, should have named the Youghiogheny "English Creek." When once on the way, the time taken by the French and English to reach the key position of the West—Pittsburg—varied inversely as the length of the portages they had to traverse. It will be remembered that Washington in his first campaign of 1754 explored carefully the Youghiogheny River in the hope that the road he had just opened from the Potomac at Cumberland, Maryland to the "Great Crossings" (Smithfield, Pennsylvania) might

1. Described in Historic Highways of America, vol. iii, pp. 74–78.