He saw Duquesne’s movement, consequently, at its very outset, warned the government at home, and was promptly instructed to require the French “peaceably to depart,” and if they would not go for the warning, “to drive them off by force of arms.” He chose as his messenger to carry the summons Mr. George Washington, half-brother to Mr. Augustine Washington, of Mount Vernon. George Washington was only a lad of twenty-one; but he had hardened already to the work of a man. He had received no schooling in England such as Augustine had had, but had gone from the simple schools and tutors of the Virginian country-side to serve as a surveyor for Lord Fairfax in the rough country of the Shenandoah,—whither Fairfax, heir of the old Culpeper grants, had come to seek a life away from courts in the picturesque wilderness of America. Augustine Washington died the very year Mr. Dinwiddie became governor, though he was but thirty-four; and he had left George, lad though he was, to administer his estate and serve in his stead as commander of the militia of eleven counties. Governor Dinwiddie knew whom he was choosing when he sent this drilled and experienced youngster, already a frontiersman, to bid the French leave the Ohio. [Illustration: ROBERT DINWIDDIE] The message was carried in the dead of winter to the grave and courteous soldier who commanded at Fort Le Bœuf; and Washington tried the endurance even of the veteran frontiersman who accompanied him by the forced marches he made thither and back again through the dense and frosted woods, across frozen streams, and through the pathless, storm-beaten tangles of deep forests, where there was hardly so much as the track of a bison for their horses to walk in. He reported that the French had received him very graciously; but had claimed the Ohio as their own, had made no pretence that they would abandon it because the English bade them, and clearly meant to establish themselves where they were. Juniors among their officers had told him so very plainly as he sat with them after dinner in a house which they had seized from an English trader. [Illustration: ENGLISH COLONIES, 1700. BORMAY & CO., N. Y.]