Lord Botetourt found no friendly response to his representations at the British Court. He had been sent to Virginia to overawe the inhabitants, and to bring them into servile obedience to the British crown. He had thought that the same views of truth, which had influenced his mind, would exert a conciliatory influence upon the king and his cabinet. But he was bitterly disappointed. Opprobrium was his only reward. Desponding and enfeebled, he was attacked by a bilious fever and died. He had become endeared to the people by his noble espousal of their cause. Washington testified that he was disposed “to render every just and reasonable service to the people whom he governed.” The House of Burgesses erected a statue to his memory, in the area of the capitol. The path of this world, as of all its nations and individuals, has ever been through darkness, clouds, and storms. While the tempest of national war, which was to doom our land to the most awful woes, was thus deepening its folds, Washington undertook another expedition, across the mountains, to the Ohio. He was influenced by public as well as private considerations. The State of Virginia had offered a bounty of two hundred thousand acres of land, to be divided among the officers and soldiers, who had served during the French war, according to their rank. Washington was one of the Virginia Board of Commissioners. There had been great neglect in settling these claims. The zeal of Washington was aroused that they should be promptly and fully paid. The treaties made with the Indians in those days, will seldom bear minute investigation. The purchasers were not careful to ascertain the validity, of the title of the chiefs, to the lands which they sold. And many of the chiefs were ready, for a suitable compensation, to sell all their right and title to lands to which they had no claim whatever. There was a powerful confederacy of tribes living in the vicinity of the great northern lakes, called the Six Nations.[68] By a treaty, in 1768, these chiefs sold to the British crown all the land possessed by them south of the river Ohio. Speculators were rushing in. It was the object of Washington to visit these fertile acres, and affix his seal to such tracts as he might deem suitable to pay off the soldiers’ claim.