FRENCH MISSION (CONTINUED.)

Monsieur La Force and three other soldiers accompanied Washington to see the commander at the next fort. The French officers resorted to various stratagems to prevent Tanacharisson, Jeskakake, White Thunder, and the Hunter going with Washington. The latter understood very well that their object was to have an opportunity to win them over to the French. But Washington insisted upon their going with him, and rebuked Captain Joncaire for his meddlesome disposition.

They were four days on their way to visit the commander, being obliged to wade through miry swamps much of the way. They reached the fort on the eleventh day of December.

On the 12th, Washington waited upon the commander of the fort and made known his business, at the same time presenting him with the letter of Governor Dinwiddie. Returning the letter, the officer said:

“The proper officer for you to see is Monsieur Reparti, whom the French government has commissioned to fill the position made vacant by the death of General Pierre Paul. He arrived seven days ago, and is expected at this fort every hour.”

Monsieur Reparti did not arrive until the next day, when the second officer in command introduced Washington to him. He received Governor Dinwiddie’s letter, and retired to translate it. In a short time, however, he sent for Washington and his interpreter to correct the translation, and see that it was well understood. Then dismissing Washington, Reparti called his officers to a council of war. While the French officers were thus engaged in secret, Washington had a good opportunity to ascertain the dimensions and equipments of the fort, and draw a plan of the same. He lost no time in making observations which would be of great benefit to his government. The following is a description of the fort which he recorded at the time to carry to Governor Dinwiddie:

“It is situated on the south or west fork of French Creek, near the water, and is almost surrounded by the creek and a small branch of it, which form a kind of island. Four houses compose the sides. The bastions are made of piles driven into the ground, standing more than twelve feet above it, and sharp at top, with port-holes cut for cannon, and loop-holes for the small arms to fire through. There are eight six-pound pieces mounted in each bastion, and one piece of four pounds before the gate. In the bastions are a guard-house, chapel, doctor’s lodging, and the commander’s private store, round which are laid platforms for the cannon and men to stand on. There are several barracks without the fort, for the soldiers’ dwellings, covered, some with bark and some with boards, made chiefly of logs. There are also several other houses, such as stables, smith’s shop, etc.

“I could get no certain account of the number of men here; but, according to the best judgment I could form, there are a hundred, exclusive of officers, of whom there are many. I also gave orders to the people who were with me to take an exact account of the canoes which were hauled up to convey their forces down in the spring. This they did, and sold fifty of birch-bark, and a hundred and seventy of pine, besides many others, which were blocked out, in readiness for being made.”

In his interview with the commander, Washington inquired of him: “By what authority have the French made prisoners of several of our English subjects?”

“The country belongs to us,” answered the commander, “and no Englishman has a right to trade upon these waters. I have orders to make prisoners of every Englishman who attempts it on these waters.

“How about the boy who was captured and carried through this place?” asked Washington.

“That a boy was captured and carried past here, I will not deny,” replied Reparti, “but I do not remember the name of the place he came from, nor understand the facts in the case particularly. The Indians had two or three scalps with them also.”

“But I was told at Venango that they had eight?” retorted Washington.

Reparti was embarrassed here, and evaded an answer.

“What has been done with John Trotter and James McClochlan, two Pennsylvania traders, whom the French captured and carried away with all their goods?” continued Washington.

“They were sent to Canada, but I understand that they have now gone home,” Reparti answered.

On the next day Washington received the commander’s reply to Governor Dinwiddie’s letter, and therefore was ready to return. The snow was deep, the weather stormy, and the horses exhausted, so that the homeward journey was undertaken with much discouragement.

When about ready to start, Washington found that the French were presenting large inducements to his Indian guides to remain. He was obliged to resort to strategy, and finally to reprimand, to frustrate their plans. When the French officers saw that all their efforts to detain them were fruitless, they offered them intoxicating liquors in order to overcome them. This device would have succeeded, as the Indians loved rum, but for Washington’s emphatic protest. He charged the French officers with base efforts to hinder his mission, and forbade half-king, with imposing threats, to touch the liquor. In this way he succeeded in his purpose to start on his return journey.

Just before starting, however, White Thunder received an injury, making it necessary for half-king to stay over with him until the next day, and take him down the river in a canoe.

“Captain Joncaire will have a good opportunity to bribe you,” suggested Washington.

“Never,” replied the half-king; “I know the French better than you do. I am a friend to the English.”

“But Captain Joncaire is a plausible Frenchman, and he will do his best to influence you,” retorted Washington. “You must be guarded against his fair speech.”

The result of this interview was, that the whole party waited for White Thunder until the next day.

The hardships of the return journey exceeded by far their previous experience, as indicated by Washington’s journal:

“We had a tedious and very fatiguing passage down the creek. Several times we had liked to have been staved against rocks, and many times were obliged all hands to get out and remain in the water half an hour or more, getting over the shoals. At one place the ice had lodged, and made it impassable by water; we were therefore obliged to carry our canoe across the neck of land, a quarter of a mile over. We did not reach Venango until the 22d, where we met with our horses.

“This creek is extremely crooked. I dare say the distance between the fort and Venango cannot be less than one hundred and thirty miles, to follow the meanders.

At Venango the horses, which Currin took there by land, were met, and the men relieved them by distributing the baggage among themselves in packs. In this way they traveled three days, the snow all the while increasing, and the horses becoming weaker and weaker. Washington saw that to keep with the party would delay his arrival at Williamsburg until the House of Burgesses had adjourned, which would be a disappointment to the public, as well as to the governor. If possible, the governor should receive his report before the adjournment of the Assembly.

“There is only one way for us to go Mr. Gist,” said Washington; “you and I must strike right through the wilderness alone, leaving the party to reach there as best they can. My report will be too late if we plod along in this way.”

“It may be later if we undertake so perilous an adventure alone,” responded Gist. “There is not one chance in ten of our ever reaching Williamsburg in that way.”

“You are too fearful altogether,” replied Washington. “I think you and I are equal to the undertaking. No doubt we shall have a rough time of it, but we are used to that; it will be no novelty to us.

“I shall abide by your decision,” added Gist, “for you are commander of this expedition, and my duty is to obey. But I believe that both of us will repent of ever undertaking such an adventure.”

“Well, then, I will take the responsibility,” said Washington, “and you and I will take the nearest and quickest route home.”

“Which may prove the longest, both in distance and time,” retorted Gist.

Washington put the remainder of the party, together with the baggage and horses, into the care of Van Braam, with instructions and money. He himself had traveled for three days in an “Indian’s walking dress,” but now made a change described in his journal thus:

“I took my necessary papers, pulled off my clothes, and tied myself up in a watch-coat. Then, with gun in hand and pack on my back, in which were my papers and provisions, I set out with Mr. Gist, fitted in the same manner, on Wednesday, the 26th.”

They traveled eighteen miles on that day, and stopped for the night at an Indian cabin. Washington usually traveled on horseback, so that he was unused to the hardships of such a journey on foot, and he was much exhausted.

They arose at two o’clock in the morning to continue their journey. When they reached Murdering Town, they fell in with an Indian who called Mr. Gist by name.

“I saw you at Venango,” said the Indian.

Then Mr. Gist recognized him as an Indian whom he saw at Joncaire’s in Venango, when they were on their journey to the French fort, which fact made him somewhat suspicious of the redskin.

“I am glad to see you,” insisted the Indian. “How does it happen that you are traveling on foot in this direction?”

“Our business requires it,” was Gist’s short reply.

“When did you leave Venango?” the Indian continued.

Mr. Gist informed him.

“Where did you leave your horses and the rest of your party?”

Mr. Gist answered evasively.

“And where are you going?”

“To the forks of the Alleghany as direct as we can go,” Washington answered. “Can you go with us and show us the nearest way?”

“I can just as well as not,” replied the Indian, “and I can take your pack along, too.”

From this point Washington was considerably relieved by transferring his pack to the back of the savage. They traveled very rapidly for ten miles, when Washington’s feet grew sore, and he became very weary.

“You are taking us too much northeasterly,” said Mr. Gist to the Indian, suspicious that he was intentionally taking them out of their way.

“That is what I think,” added Washington. “I am quite confident that we are bearing too much to the northeast.”

The truth was, that both Washington and Mr. Gist were suspicious that the Indian was proving treacherous, though neither of them suggested the idea to the other.

“But let us encamp here,” continued Washington, “for I need rest.”

“I will carry your gun, and that will relieve you,” said the Indian, a suggestion that strengthened suspicions already awakened.

“No; I prefer to carry my own gun,” replied Washington; “you will do your part if you carry my pack.”

“But it is not safe to encamp here,” the Indian added, “for Ottawa Indians hunt in these woods, and they will scalp an Englishman wherever they find him. But if you will go to my cabin you are safe.”

“And where is your cabin?” inquired Gist.

“So near that we could hear a gun if fired there now,” the Indian replied.

Although strongly suspicious of his designs, both followed him for a distance, steering in a more northerly direction. Gist grew uneasy, and stopping, said, “I will go no farther.”

“A whoop could be heard at my cabin now,” the Indian insisted. “We shall soon be there.”

They traveled two miles farther, when Washington remarked:

“I shall stop at the next place we find water, and you must stop, too,” addressing the Indian. This was said in a decisive manner. In a few moments they emerged from the woods into a long meadow. The Indian was three or four rods in advance of them. Suddenly stopping and turning about, the treacherous savage aimed his gun at Gist, and fired.

“Are you shot?” cried Washington, rushing forward to his companion. “Are you shot?”

“No; but it is what I feared from the time we employed the rascal to guide us,” answered Gist. The shot missed.

The Indian ran behind a large white oak, Washington and Gist following after him. Approaching the tree, they discovered that he was reloading his gun.

You rascal! exclaimed Gist, raising his musket to give the Indian its contents.

“No; that won’t do,” said Washington to Gist, pushing aside his gun. “We are worse off when you have killed him than we are now.” He thought the tribe would avenge his death by killing them.

“The villain deserves a bullet through his heart,” shouted Gist, “and I can put one through with good relish.”

“Very true,” answered Washington with the most astonishing coolness, “but it is not good policy for us to take his life now.”

Washington took away the Indian’s gun and compelled him to walk ahead. At the first run of water he ordered him to build a camp fire, as if he designed to encamp there for the night. When this was done Gist said to him:

“I suppose you were lost, and fired your gun.”

“No, I was not lost,” answered the savage, “I know where my cabin is, and it is not far away.”

“Well, then,” continued Gist, “do you go home, and here is a cake of bread for you, and you must provide meat for us in the morning.”

The Indian was glad enough to get away without being pierced by a bullet, and he promised them excellent fare the next morning. It was nine o’clock at night when he left them, taking with him his gun, that Washington returned to him. Gist followed him for quite a distance, to be sure that he was not deceiving them, and then hurried back.

“Now, since you would not let me shoot the villain,” he said to Washington, “we must shoulder our packs and hurry away, and walk all night, or we shall never see Williamsburg.”

“You are right, Gist, and we will be off at once; and the fellow may keep his meat till we come this way again,” replied Washington, with as much composure as if their lives had not been in jeopardy. By the light of the camp fire their compass showed them which way to go.

The excitement of this perilous episode seemed to rest Washington’s weary limbs, so that they traveled rapidly through the whole night, finding themselves at the head of Piney Creek in the morning. Washington’s journal has the following entry for that day:

“The next day we continued traveling until quite dark, and got to the river, two miles above Shannopin’s. We expected to have found the river frozen, but it was not, only about fifty yards from each shore. The ice, I suppose, had broken up above, for it was driving in vast quantities.

“What next?” said Gist, with an air which indicated that he recalled his warning words to Washington about the perils of such a journey. “If the Indian’s bullet had taken effect we should have been saved some trouble here.”

“A formidable difficulty, to be sure,” answered Washington; “but a good share of wit and perseverance may overcome it. No way of getting over this stream, I think, except on a raft.”

“A raft!” exclaimed Gist. “A raft would be swamped in a giffy by that ice. Besides, what have we to build a raft with? A hatchet alone will not do it.”

“A hatchet is much better than nothing,” responded Washington. “We will try what a hatchet can do towards it. If we fail, we will fail in trying.”

“Try it is, then,” said Gist, rather admiring Washington’s hopefulness and pluck than otherwise. “I am at your service, and if anybody can cross the river, I think a man of your grit can.”

So they set to work to construct a raft, with no implement but a solitary hatchet, consuming a whole day in the work. When the awkward affair was fairly launched, they went on board of it, and pushed off for the opposite shore. About mid-way of the river, the floating ice came down with such violence as to threaten the destruction of the raft.

“We can never reach the shore on this craft,” said Gist, in a tone indicating entire resignation to a watery grave.

“Can’t we stop the raft and let the ice go by?” answered Washington, at the same time putting down the setting pole to accomplish this purpose. But the rapidity of the torrent dashed the raft with such violence against the pole that it threw Washington into ten feet of water.

“Hold on!” shouted Gist under the greatest alarm; “grasp this oar.” And he reached out his oar to Washington, who had already caught hold of one of the raft-logs. A severe but short struggle, and he was on the raft again.

A cold bath, remarked Washington, as he stood upon the raft again, shaking the water from his drenched clothes.

“It is a miracle that you were not drowned,” replied Gist; “and you would have been if you were as nervous as some people.”

“I am cool enough now,” said Washington, his wet clothes already beginning to stiffen on his back in the wintry blast. “I shall not despair so long as I remember that one faithful saint is praying for me,” referring to the promise of his mother.

They made a desperate effort to keep their craft right side up in the floating ice, but failed in the attempt.

“No use!” exclaimed Gist. “We must quit the concern and make for that island.”

“Yes; and that immediately, if we would save ourselves,” responded Washington, as he leaped into the water, followed by Gist. The island was but a few rods distant, and they reached it just at night, with the gloomy prospect of remaining shelterless upon it until the next morning.

“Not much better off here than we were in the water,” suggested Gist. “My fingers are frozen, and some of my toes; and what is to prevent the freezing of the remainder of my body?”

“If we perish, we will perish trying to keep alive,” remarked Washington. “We have plenty of room to exercise ourselves here, and keep up a circulation, with no fear of being shot at by savages. It will not do to sleep in this predicament.”

“It will be our last sleep if we do,” answered Gist. “The cold is rapidly increasing, and I hardly see how any amount of exercise can save us.

“Be a little more hopeful, Gist. I have faith to believe that we shall be saved yet,” said Washington. “This increasing cold is providential, I think. It will freeze the river before morning, and thus provide a way for us to escape from this island.”

“Well, that is a hopeful view, I confess,” replied Gist; “but how the biting cold can freeze the river without freezing us is incomprehensible to me.”

They made a remarkable night of it, and saved their lives by muscular exertion. They dashed about in the cold, gathering hope and courage from hour to hour as the water of the stream congealed harder and harder. In the morning they crossed the river on the ice, truly thankful to a kind Providence, which had delivered them from what, to human view, was inevitable death.

Once upon the other side of the river, they made their way as speedily as possible to the house of Mr. Frazier, a few miles distant, where they regaled themselves with fire and food to their hearts’ content, recounting their adventures, and causing all to wonder that they were still among the living.

Here Washington met twenty warriors, who were going to the southward to war, but had returned from Great Kenhawa, because there they found a family of seven people killed and scalped.

“Why did you return?” inquired Washington of a chief.

“For fear the inhabitants might take us to be the murderers,” the chief replied.

“Did the condition of the bodies show that the massacre was recent?” Washington inquired further.

“Not very recent; the bodies were scattered about, and several of them were much eaten by hogs,” was the chief’s answer.

“Have you any suspicions as to who the murderers were?” urged Washington.

“Certain marks which they left behind showed that the butchery was done by Indians of the Ottawa nation,” was the information given in answer to his question.

Mr. Frazier informed Washington that an Indian queen, living three miles distant, had taken offense because he did not call upon her on his way to the fort. As he was obliged to wait two days for horses, he paid her a visit and made her a present of a watch-coat.

Washington’s final entry in his journal is:

“Tuesday, the 1st of January, 1774, we left Mr. Frazier’s house, and arrived at Mr. Gist’s, at Monongahela, the 2d, where I bought a horse and saddle. The 6th, we met seventeen horses loaded with materials and stores for a fort at the fork of the Ohio, and the day after, some families going out to settle. This day we arrived at Will’s Creek, after as fatiguing a journey as it is possible to conceive, rendered so by excessive bad weather. From the first day of December to the fifteenth, there was but one day on which it did not rain or snow incessantly; and throughout the whole journey we met with nothing but one continued series of cold, wet weather, which occasioned very uncomfortable lodgings, especially after we had quitted our tent, which was some screen from the inclemency of it.”

Washington arrived at Williamsburg on the sixteenth day of January, and immediately reported to Governor Dinwiddie, delivering the reply of the French commander; the belts of wampum from the Indian tribes, as pledges of friendship; together with his journal, as his report of the expedition.

Weems says, “The governor was much pleased with the Indian belts, more with the Frenchman’s letter, but most of all with Washington’s journal.”

“I shall have your journal published immediately,” said the governor to Washington.

“I beg your honor not to give it to the public in print,” replied Washington; “it is a very defective document, written, as it was, in the wilderness, under the most unfavorable circumstances. It was intended for no eyes but yours.

“My dear man,” said the hearty Scotchman, “you are altogether too modest in this matter. I am sure that the document is worthy of the greatest publicity.”

“But you will grant me the privilege of amending it,” pleaded Washington, almost frightened at the idea of his journal appearing in print.

“Indeed, major, there is no time for that now,” answered the governor. “The Assembly will rise to-morrow or next day, and I want each member to have several copies to carry home with him. You need not give yourself any uneasiness, man, for your journal is worthy of a perusal by the King of Great Britain, and I intend to present him with a copy.”

The journal went to press at once, and was in the hands of members of the Assembly before the adjournment. It was received with the greatest enthusiasm and praise everywhere, and was published in all the papers of the Colony. Copies were sent to England, and there it appeared in the journals of the day.