They jeered at the
divisions among the English and believed their own unity so
strong that they could master the colonies one by one. The two
colonies most affected were Pennsylvania and Virginia, either of
them quite ready to see its own citizens advance into the Ohio
country and possess the land, but neither of them willing to
unite with the other in effective military action to protect the
frontier.
It is at this crisis that there appears for the first time in
history George Washington of Virginia. In December, 1753, in the
dead of winter, he made a long, toilsome journey from Virginia to
the north through snow and rain, by difficult forest trails, over
two ranges of mountains, across streams sometimes frozen,
sometimes dangerous from treacherous thaws. On the way he heard
gossip from the Indians about the designs of the French. They
boasted that they would come in numbers like the sands of the
seashore; that the natives would be no more an obstacle to them
than the flies and mosquitoes, which indeed they resembled; and
that not the breadth of a finger-nail of land belonged to the
Indians.
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