or occupations.

Some were without hats and shoes; some had coats, and no shirts; some
had shirts, and no coats; and all were without arms, or any keen
desire to use them if they had them. All this disgusted and
disheartened our youthful colonel not a little; for he was young, and
had yet to learn that it is of just such stuff that the beginnings of
armies are always made. The slender pay of a soldier was not enough to
tempt the thriving yeomanry to leave their rich acres and snug
firesides to undergo the hardships and dangers of a camp life; as if,
by failing to answer their country's call, and fighting in its
defence, they were not running a still greater risk of losing all they
had.

To encourage the young men of the province to come forward, Gov.
Dinwiddie caused it to be proclaimed, that two hundred thousand acres
of the very best land on the head-waters of the Ohio should be divided
between those that should enlist and serve during the war. This
splendid offer had, in some small measure, the effect desired; so
that, in a short time, something like an army was cobbled together,
with which, poor and scantily provided as it was, they at last
resolved to take the field.

Col. Washington, in command of the main body, was ordered to go on in
advance, and cut a military road through the wilderness, in the
direction of the new fort at the Forks of the Ohio, by way of the
Monongahela; while Col. Fry was to remain behind with the rest of the
troops, to bring up the cannon and heavy stores when the road should
be opened. When the pioneers had cut their way about twenty miles
beyond the frontier town of Winchester, there came a rumor, that the
men who had been sent to build the fort at the Forks of the Ohio had
all been surprised and captured by the French. In a few days, all
doubts as to the truth of this report were set at rest by the men
themselves, who came walking leisurely into camp, with their spades
and axes on their shoulders, to every appearance quite well and
comfortable.

For several days, they said, they had been working away on the fort
quite merrily; when, early one morning, they were much surprised to
see one thousand Frenchmen, in sixty bateaux, or boats, and three
hundred canoes, with six pieces of cannon, dropping quietly down the
Alleghany. The leader of this gallant little force summoned the fort
to surrender in the short space of an hour, or else they would find
their unfinished timber-work tumbli