spite of the sternness of the law-abiding, and the savageness of the lawless portions of the English settlements, they contrasted favorably in every way with the settlements which were nominally French and the centres of colonization which hoisted the French flag. [Sidenote: 1754--Young Mr. Washington] After a long stretch of threatened hostilities, the pinch came at last in 1753, when the two nations met on the banks of the Ohio. The meeting meant one of the greatest and most momentous series of wars in the century. {285} French soldiers invaded all the settlements of the Ohio company and drove the settlers out. The Governor of Virginia sent an ambassador to the French officer commanding on the Ohio, and chose as his ambassador a young Virginian gentleman then absolutely unknown except to the small circle of his personal friends, but destined to become one of the most famous, and most deservedly famous, men in history. Young Mr. George Washington bore Governor Dinwiddie's message over 500 miles through the wilderness at the peril of his life. That expedition, says Irving, "may be considered the foundation of his fortunes. From that moment he was the rising hope of Virginia." The French commander informed the young envoy that he proposed to hold Ohio and drive the English out. Back went George Washington through the wilderness again with this discouraging reply. After that hostilities were inevitable. The next year Washington, then lieutenant-colonel, led a small force to the frontier, and fired the first shot against the enemy. It is curious to think of all the results that followed from that first shot. The fall of the French colonies in America, the establishment of the American Republic, the French Revolution--all may, by the simplest process of causation, be traced back to the first shot fired by Washington's command against a petty officer on the frontier. That shot echoes on the Plains of Abraham, at Lexington and Bunker's Hill, at the taking of the Bastille, and with the "whiff of grape-shot"; we may hear it at Waterloo and in the autumn horrors of the Coup d'Etat.