secret foes behind him and three open foes in front--
Vaudreuil the owl, and Bigot the fox, behind; Pitt,
Saunders and Wolfe, three lions like himself, in front.




CHAPTER III

OSWEGO
1756

In 1753 the governor of Virginia had sent Washington,
then a young major of only twenty-one, to see what the
French were doing in the valley of the Ohio, where they
had been busy building forts to shut the gateway of the
West against the British and to keep it open for themselves.
The French officers at a post which they called Venango
received Washington very politely and asked him to supper.
Washington wrote in his diary that, after they had drunk
a good deal of wine, 'they told me that it was their
absolute design to take possession of the Ohio, and by
God they would do it.' When Washington had returned home
and reported, the Virginians soon sent him back with a
small force to turn the French out. But meanwhile the
French had been making themselves much stronger, and on
July 4, 1754, when Washington advanced into the disputed
territory, he was overcome and obliged to surrender--a
strange Fourth of July for him to look back upon!