urt of France, touching the complaints that were made of the
encroachments in America, despatched orders to all the governors of
that country to repel force by force, and drive the French from their
settlements on the river Ohio. Accordingly, the provinces of Virginia
and Pennsylvania took this important affair into their consideration;
but while they deliberated, the French vigorously prosecuted their
designs on the other side of the mountains. They surprised Log's Town,
which the Virginians had built upon the Ohio; made themselves masters
of the Block-house and Truck-house, where they found skins and other
commodities to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, and destroyed all
the British traders, except two who found means to escape. At the same
time, M. de Contrecour, with a thousand men and eighteen pieces of
cannon, arrived in three hundred canoes from Venango, a fort they had
raised on the banks of the Ohio, and reduced by surprise a British fort
which the Virginians had built on the forks of the Monangahela, that
runs into the same river.

CONFERENCE WITH THE INDIANS.

These hostilities were followed by divers skirmishes between the people
of the two nations, which were fought with various success. At length
the governors of the English settlements received orders from England to
form a political confederacy for their mutual defence; and the governor
of New York was directed to confer with the chiefs of the Six Nations,
with a view to detach them from the French interest by dint of promises
and presents of value, sent over for that purpose. A congress was
accordingly appointed at Albany, to which place the governor of New
York repaired, accompanied by commissioners from all the other British
settlements; but a very small number of Indians arrived, and even these
seemed to be indifferent to the advances and exhortations that were made
by the English orator. The truth is, the French had artfully weaned them
from their attachment to the subjects of Great Britain. Nevertheless,
they accepted the presents, renewed their treaties with the king of
England, and even demanded his assistance in driving the French from the
posts and possessions they had usurped within the Indian territories. It
was in consequence of the measures here taken, that colonel Washington
was detached from Virginia with four hundred men, and occupied a post on
the banks of the river Ohio, where he threw up some works, and erected
a kind of o