hree chiefs of inferior
note attending.

Virginia refused to send delegates to the Albany Convention; and the
assembly and governor united in disapproving of Franklin's Plan of
Union, adopted on that occasion. Dinwiddie during the previous year had
proposed to Lord Halifax a plan of colonial government, dividing the
colonies into two districts, northern and southern, in each of which
there should be a congress, or general council, for the regulation of
their respective interests.

The money appropriated by the assembly for the support of the troops was
expended under the care of a committee of the assembly, associated with
the governor, and the niggardly economy of this committee gave great
disgust to Washington and the officers under him. He declared that he
would prefer serving as a volunteer to "slaving dangerously for the
shadow of pay through woods, rocks, mountains." Expecting a collision
with the enemy, he wrote to Governor Dinwiddie, "We have prepared
a charming field for an encounter." Ascertaining that a French
reconnoitering detachment was near his camp, and believing their
intentions hostile, he determined to anticipate them. Guided by friendly
Indians, in a dark and rainy night he approached the French encampment,
and early on the twenty-eighth of May, with forty of his own men and a
few Indians, surrounded the French. A skirmish ensued; M. De Jumonville,
the officer in command, and ten of his party were killed, and twenty-two
made prisoners. Several of them appeared to have a mixture of Indian
blood in them. The death of Jumonville created no little indignation in
France, and became the subject of a French poem. It is said that
Washington, in referring to this affair, remarked that "he knew of no
music so pleasing as the whistling of bullets." This being mentioned in
the presence of George the Second, he observed, "He would not say so if
he had been used to hear many." The king had himself fought at the
battle of Dettingen. Inquiry being many years afterwards made of
Washington as to the expression, he replied, "If I said so, it was when
I was young." Charles the Twelfth, of Sweden, expressed delight when he
first heard the whistling of bullets. Of Washington's men one was killed
and two or three were wounded. While the regiment was on its march to
join the detachment in advance, the command devolved, at the end of May,
on Lieutenant-Colonel Washington by the death of Colonel Fry. This
officer, a native