[Footnote 11: Smollett says that "Jumonville bore a summons to Colonel Washington, requiring him to quit the fort, which he pretended was built on ground belonging to the French or their allies. So little regard was paid to this intimation, that the English fell upon this party, and, as the French affirm, without the least provocation, either slew or took the whole detachment. De Villiers, incensed at these unprovoked hostilities...."--Smollett, vol. iii., p. 421.] [Footnote 12: "This skirmish, of small importance, perhaps, in itself, was yet among the principal causes of the war. It is no less memorable as the first appearance in the pages of history of one of their brightest ornaments--of that great and good man, GENERAL WASHINGTON."--Lord Mahon's _History of England_, vol. iv., p. 65. "This event was no sooner known in England than the British embassador at Paris received directions to complain of it to the French ministry, as an open violation of the peace."--Smollett, vol. iii., p. 421.] [Footnote 13: "The capitulation was written in French, and as neither Mr. Washington nor any of his party understood that language, a foreigner was employed to read it to them in English. But, instead of acting the part of a faithful interpreter, when he came to the word 'assassination,'[56] employed in the capitulation to designate M. de Jumonville's defeat and death, he translated it 'the defeat of M. de Jumonville.' This I have the best authority to assert; the authority of the English officers who were present. Indeed, the thing speaks for itself. It can not be supposed that these gentlemen should know so little of what they owed to themselves, both as men and as soldiers, as not to prefer any extremity rather than submit to the disgrace of being branded with the imputation of so horrid a crime. After all, had they been guilty of this charge, they could scarce have been worse used than they were."--_History of the late War in America_ by Major Thomas Mante, p. 14 (London, 1772).] [Footnote 14: "The coal measures of this part of Maryland are usually called the Cumberland coal-field, from Fort Cumberland, famous for the wars of the English with the French and Indians, in which General Washington took part before the American Revolution. The carboniferous strata are arranged geologically in a trough about twenty-five miles long from north to south, and from three to four miles broad. Professor Silliman and his son, who surveyed them, have aptly compared the shape of the successive beds to a great number of canoes placed one within another."--Lyell's _Geology_, vol. ii., p. 17.] [Footnote 15: "An able diplomacy in Europe exerted betimes would probably have allayed the rancor of these feuds in America. But, for our misfortune, we had then at Paris as embassador the Earl of Albemarle, an indolent man of pleasure."--Lord Mahon's _History of England_, vol. iv., p. 66. London, 1844.