hideous from the waste that has been
thrown out for years upon a pile never taken away, always increasing. No
grass grows on it, no children play on it, the hens won't scratch on it.
The houses of the miners turn one face to this ugliness and it is only
because they turn toward the mountains on another side that the people
are preserved from the death of the spirit that comes to those who look
forever on the unlovely."

"Is there any early history about here?" asked Helen, whose interest
was unfailing in the story of her country.

"The French and Indian Wars were fought in part through this land,"
answered Mr. Emerson. "You remember the chief struggle for the continent
lay between the English and the French. There were many reasons why the
Indians sided with the French in Canada, and the result of the
friendship was that; the natives were supplied with arms by the
Europeans and the struggle was prolonged for about seventy-five years."

"Wasn't the attack on Deerfield during the French and Indian War?" asked
Ethel Blue.

"Yes, and there were many other such attacks."

"The French insisted that all the country west of the Alleghenies
belonged to them and they disputed the English possession at every
point. When Washington was only twenty-one years old he was sent to beg
the French not to interfere with the English, but he had a hard journey
with no fortunate results. It was on this journey that he picked out a
good position for a fort and started to build it. It was where Pittsburg
now stands."

"That was a good position for a fort, where the Allegheny and
Monongahela Rivers join to make the Ohio," commended Roger.

"It was such a good position that the French drove off the English
workmen and finished the work themselves. They called it Fort Duquesne
and it became one of a string of sixty French forts extending from
Quebec to New Orleans."

"Some builders!" commended Roger.

"Fort Duquesne was so valuable that the English sent one of their
generals, Braddock, to capture it. Washington went with him on his
staff, to show him the way."

"It must have been a long trip from the coast through all this hilly
country."

"It was. They had to build roads and they were many weeks on the way."

"It was a different matter from the twentieth century transportation of
soldiers by train and motor trucks and stages," reminded Mrs. Morton.

"When the British were very near Fort Duquesne," continued Mr. Emerson,
"the Fre