thriving, fast young city of Pittsburg.

They now had leisure to pay the last sad duty to the dead who had
fallen in the two defeats of Braddock and Grant. For three long years,
the bodies of Braddock's slaughtered men had lain without Christian
burial, bleaching in the sun of as many summers, and shrouded in the
snows of as many winters. Mingled with the bones of oxen and horses,
or half hidden in heaps of autumn leaves, they lay scattered about the
stony hillsides,--a spectacle ghastly indeed, and most melancholy to
behold. With many a sigh of pity for the hapless dead, and many a
shudder of dark remembrance on the part of those who had been present
at the scenes of rout and massacre, they gathered together the
blackened corpses of Grant's men and the whitened bones of Braddock's
men, and, digging a huge pit, buried them in one common grave. In this
pious duty all took part alike, from the general down to the common
soldier.

With the fall of Fort Duquesne, ended, as Washington had years ago
foreseen, the troubles of the Western and Southern frontiers, and with
it the power so long held by the French in the Ohio Valley. The
Indians, with that fickleness of mind peculiar to savage races, now
hastened to offer terms of amity and peace to the party whom the
fortunes of war had left uppermost.

Having done his part, and so large a part, towards the restoration of
quiet and security to his native province, the cherished object of his
heart, for which he had so faithfully and manfully struggled,
Washington resolved to bring his career as a soldier to a close. In
his very soul, he was sick and weary of strife, and longed for peace.
The scenes of violence and bloodshed had become loathing and painful
to him beyond the power of words to tell; and, now that his country
had no longer need of his services, he felt that he could, without
reproach, retire to the tranquil shades of private life he loved so
much, and had looked forward to with such earnest longings. He
therefore, at the end of the year, gave up his commission, and left
the service, followed by the admiration and affection of his soldiers,
and the applause and gratitude of his fellow-countrymen.

With the fall of Quebec in the course of the following year (1759),
this long and eventful Old French War was brought to a close, and
French empire in America was at an end.

XXII.

WASHINGTON AT HOME.

Having done all that a brave and prudent man could for