He was back at Williamsburg with his report by the middle of January, 1754; and the next month a small body of frontiersmen was hurried forward to make a clearing at the forks of the Ohio and begin the construction of fortifications there ere spring came, and the French. The French came, nevertheless, all too soon. By the 17th of April their canoes swarmed there, bearing five hundred men and field ordnance, and the forty Englishmen who held the rude, unfinished defences of the place had no choice but to retire or be blown into the water. The French knew the importance of the place as a key to the western lands, and they meant to have it, though they should take it by an open act of war. Their force there numbered fourteen hundred before summer came. They built a veritable fort, of the rough frontier pattern, but strong enough, as it seemed, to make the post secure, and waited to see what the English would do. Dinwiddie had acted with good Scots capacity, as efficiently and as promptly as he could with the power he had. He was obliged to deal with a colonial assembly,—the French governors were not; and the Virginian burgesses thought of domestic matters when Dinwiddie’s thought was at the frontier. While Washington was deep in the forests, bearing his message, they quarrelled with the governor about the new fees which were charged since his coming for grants of the public land; and they refused him money because he would not yield in the matter. But when they knew how things actually stood in the West, and saw that the governor would levy troops for the exigency whether they acted with him or not, and pay for them out of his own pocket if necessary, they voted supplies. There was no highway of open rivers for the Virginians, as for the French, by which they could descend to the forks of the Ohio; and Virginia had no troops ready as the French had. Raw levies of volunteers had first to be got together; and when they had been hastily gathered, clothed, and a little drilled, the first use to which it was necessary to put them was to cut a rough, mountainous road for themselves through the untouched forests which lay thick upon the towering Blue Ridge. It was painfully slow work, wrought at for week after week, and the French were safely intrenched at their fort “Duquesne” before the tired Virginian recruits had crossed the crest of the mountains. By midsummer they were ready to strike and drive the English back. [Illustration: MERCHANTS’ EXCHANGE, NEW YORK, 1752-1799]