When Céloron de Blainville was sent to the Allegheny in 1749, by the Governor of New France, his message was that "the Governor of Canada desired his children on Ohio to turn away the English Traders from amongst them and discharge them from ever coming to trade there again, or on any of the Branches." He sent away all the traders whom he found, giving them letters addressed to their respective governors denying England's right to trade in the West. To offset this move, within two years Pennsylvania sent goods to the value of nine hundred pounds in order to hold the Indians constant. The Governor had already ordered the traders to sell whiskey to the Indians at "5 Bucks" per cask and had told the Indians, through his agent Conrad Weiser, that if any trader refused to sell the liquor at that price they might "take it from him and drink it for nothing." There was but one way for the French to meet such competition. Without delay they fortified the Allegheny and began to coerce the natives. Driving away the carpenters of the Ohio Company from the present site of Pittsburgh, they built Fort Duquesne. The beginning of the Old French War ended what we may call the first era of the pack-horse trade. The capture of Fort Duquesne by the English army under General Forbes in 1758 and the final conquest of New France two years later removed the French barrier and opened the way to expansion beyond the Alleghanies. Thereafter settlements in the Monongahela country grew apace. Pittsburgh, Uniontown, Morgantown, Brownsville, Ligonier, Greensburg, Connellsville--we give the modern names--became centers of a great migration which was halted only for a season by Pontiac's Rebellion, the aftermath of the French War, and was resumed immediately on the suppression of that Indian rising. The pack-horse trade now entered its final and most important era. The earlier period was one in which the trade was confined chiefly to the Indians; the later phase was concerned with supplying the needs of the white man in his rapidly developing frontier settlements. Formerly the principal articles of merchandise for the western trade were guns, ammunition, knives, kettles, and tools for their repair, blankets, tobacco, hatchets, and liquor. In the new era every known product of the East found a market in the thriving communities of the upper Ohio. As time went on the West began to send to the East, in addition to skins and pelts, whiskey that brought a dollar a gallon. Each pony could carry sixteen gallons and every drop could be sold for real money. On the return trip the pack-horses carried back chiefly salt and iron. Doddridge's Notes, one of the chief sources of our information, gives this lively picture: