THE Treaty of Aiz-la-Chapelle of 1748, like its predecessors, at Ryswick and Utrecht fafled to settle the vital question between the rival claimants of North America. A commission of two Englishmen and two Frenchmen sat in Paris for many months after this treaty was signed, endeavoring to adjust the French-English boundaries in America; but they labored in vain.

The first subject in dispute was the bounds of Acadia. The Treaty of Utrecht ceded it to England without defining its bounds, and thus planted the seeds of future quarrels. The French now contended that Acadia comprised only the peninsula of Nova Scotia, while the English claimed that the bounds formerly given to it by the French must now be adhered to. By these bounds the vast territory comprising northern Maine, New Brunswick, and a great portion of the St. Lawrence Valley were included in Acadia. While this question was pending, a more important and immediate one came up for solution, namely, the ownership of the Ohio Valley.

This valley of the "Beautiful River" was a princely domain. It extended southward from Lake Erie and westward from the base of the Alleghany Mountains, comprising an endless succession of hills and valleys, watered by innumerable crystal streams, and stretching on and on until it merged at length into the greater valley of the Mississippi. The French claimed this vast region as a part of the great basin of the Mississippi discovered by Marquette and La Salle, and now secured by a cordon of forts from Canada to the sunny climate of the Gulf of Mexico. The English claimed it on two grounds, both of which were as shadowy as the claims of the French: first, the early charters of Virginia and of other colonies (based on the Cabot discoveries) which covered the unknown regions westward to the equally unknown "South Sea"; and second, the claims of the Iroquois. The Iroquois had been acknowledged British subjects by the Treaty of Utrecht, and their lands were therefore British territory, and their conquests were considered British conquests. Roving bands of these Indians had, at various times, traversed this western country, and had here and there driven off the natives or gained some trivial victory; and the English now claimed many thousands of square miles in consequence of these "conquests." They "laid claim to every mountain, forest, or prairie where an Iroquois had taken a scalp."¹

The claims of both nations were extravagant in the extreme. If the French had had their way, the English would have been confined to the narrow space between the crest of the Alleghanies and the Atlantic. If the English boundaries had been accepted, the French would have been hemmed within a small portion of Canada, north of the river St. Lawrence. Both nations were now moving to occupy the Ohio Valley. The governor of Canada sent Celoron de Bienville, who, with a company of Canadians and Indians, floated down the Allegheny and Ohio rivers, and took formal possession in the name of his king. At the mouth of a river flowing into the Ohio, he would choose a large tree and nail to it a tin plate bearing the arms of France, while at its root he would bury a leaden plate inscribed with the statement that the country belonged to France. This was done at many places along the Ohio.²

During this same year, 1749, the English made a far more rational and tangible move toward securing the coveted territory. The Ohio Company was formed; it was composed of a few wealthy Virginians, to whom King George II granted five hundred thousand acres of land free of rent for ten years, between the Monongahela and Kanawha rivers, on condition that they plant one hundred families and maintain a fort in their new possessions. A little later the French made an important move. They built a fort at Presque Isle, where Erie now stands, Fort Le Boeuf, twenty miles from this, and Venango, on the site of the city of Franklin, Pennsylvania. This action alarmed Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, as Virginia claimed the whole of the Allegheny Valley by right of her charter of 1609. The governor, therefore, determined to make a formal protest against the occupation of this territory by the French, and in choosing a messenger to make the journey to the newly built forts he unconsciously introduced to the future a young man who was destined to hold the first place in the heart of the great nation that was soon to be born in America--George Washington. Washington was a youth of twenty-one years and was adjutant-general of the Virginia militia. He had seen much experience in the woods as a surveyor. He was tall and stalwart, and he not only excelled all his fellows in athletic sports, but was specially noted for his moral character and for his unswerving fidelity to truth and duty. This first appearance of Washington in public life revealed the metal of which he was made, and plainly foreshadowed the great deeds of which he afterward became the hero. With the strength and vigor of youth, he and a few attendants made this perilous journey through the unbroken forest. Over hills and mountains, swamps and marshes, encountering deep snows and frozen rivers, and every peril of a wilderness yet untrodden by the foot of the pioneer, he carried the letter of Virginia's governor to the French commandant at Fort Le Boeuf. Washington's chief guides were Christopher Gist, a pioneer noted for his great skill in woodcraft, and Half King, an Indian chief whom he picked up on the banks of the Ohio. He was treated with much kindness by the French commandant, Saint-Pierre, who, however, declared in his answer that he would remain at his post, according to the commands of his general, but promised to send Dinwiddie's letter to Marquis Duquesne, the governor of Canada.

Washington thus won the warm favor of his governor and the attention of all Virginia. The people early recognized in him the rising hero, nor was it long until his further services were needed, for hostilities were at hand. Before midsummer of this same year, 1754, Washington, in command of a small body of militia near a place called Great Meadows, fired on a body of Frenchmen under the command of Jumonville, and the latter with nine of his men were killed;³ and the great war that was to shake two continents, and to determine the language and civilization of the future United States, was begun.