When he had again been silent a long while, he said that this time, at least, he was not responsible for my appointment, and Dinwiddie was a fool to send a boy on a man’s errand. This was my own opinion, but I made no reply. At last he filled his pipe again, and called for a coal, and said, “But by George, George, you never were a boy, not since I knew you.” I ventured to say that but for his former influence this office would not have come to me. To this he made no answer, but bid me distrust every Indian, especially the Half-King, who was not treacherous but uncertain, and not less every Frenchman, and added that I was so young that they would think that I could be easily fooled. I said that might be an advantage, for I meant to see all there was to see, and had told Van Braam to keep his ears open. His lordship laughed, and said I might thank Heaven there were no women in the business, and with this, bidding me have the fire made up for the night, we lay down to sleep in the lean-to. I find it interesting now in my old age to discover myself thus able to recall, little by little, what his lordship said. I was pleased at the notice he took of me, but a lad, and lay long awake under the lean-to, thinking upon such counsels as his lordship had been pleased to give. XIX As I turn over the diary in which I recorded my journey through this wilderness, I find myself remembering many little incidents which I never set down. It rained or snowed almost daily. The rivers were swollen, so that we had to swim our horses, an art which soldiers should be taught. Although Van Braam much enlivened the way by his songs and very doubtful tales of his wars, I was very tired and my new buckskin coat in tatters when we arrived at the mouth of Turtle Creek on the Monongahela. There we found Frazier, a trader whom the French had driven out of the Indian town of Venango. With two canoes he lent me I sent our baggage down the Monongahela to the fork, where, with the Alleghany River, it joins the Ohio, and set out on a bad trail to meet them. We got to the Forks of the Ohio before the canoes. There, I settled in my mind, was the place for a fort, nor could I better that judgment to-day. It came afterwards to be chosen by the French engineer Mercier to be Fort Duquesne. On the rise of ground we made camp, and paid a visit to Shingiss of the Delawares, who pretended to favour us, but proved later a savage foe. Gist insisted that he could tell from their faces how the Indians felt towards us, but to me they told nothing, and are in this respect unlike the faces of white men.