Synopsis
A thousand vague rumors came over the Allegheny mountains during the year 1753 to Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, of French aggressions into the Ohio River valley, the more alarming because vague and uncertain. Orders were soon at hand from London authorizing the Virginian Governor to erect a fort on the Ohio which would hold that river for England and tend to conciliate the Indians to English rule. But the Governor was too much in the dark as to the operations of the French to warrant any decisive step, and he immediately cast about him for an envoy whom he could trust to find out what was really happening in the valley of the Ohio. Who was to be this envoy? The mission called for a person of unusual capacity; a diplomat, a soldier and a frontiersman. Five hundred miles were to be threaded on Indian trails in the dead of winter. This was woodman’s work. There were cunning Indian chieftains and French officers, trained to intrigue, to be met, influenced, conciliated. This, truly, demanded a diplomat. There were forts to be marked and mapped, highways of approach to be considered and compared, vantage sites on river and mountain to be noted and valued. This was work for a soldier and a strategist.
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