"Faith, you're a brave lad," broke out the old Scotch governor, "and, if you play your cards well, you shall have no cause to repent your bargain," and Major Washington departed from Williamsburg on the last day of October but one, 1753. The first sentence in the _Journal_ he now began suggests his zeal and promptness: "I was commissioned and appointed by the Honourable _Robert Dinnwiddie_, Esq; Governor, _&c_ of _Virginia_, to visit and deliver a Letter to the Commandant of the _French_ Forces on the _Ohio_, and set out on the intended Journey the same Day." At Fredericksburg he employed his old fencing tutor Jacob van Braam as his interpreter and pushed on westward over the trail used by the Ohio Company to Wills Creek (Cumberland, Maryland) on the upper Potomac, where he arrived November 14. Wills Creek was the last Virginian outpost, where Fort Cumberland was soon erected. Already the Ohio Company had located a storehouse at this point. Onward the Indian trail wound in and out through the Alleghanies, over the successive ranges known as Wills, Savage, and Meadow Mountains. From the latter it dropped down into Little Meadows. Here in the open ground, covered with rank grasses, the first of the western water was crossed, a branch of the Youghiogheny river. From "Little Crossings," as the ford was called, the narrow trail vaulted Negro Mountain and came down upon the upper Youghiogheny, this ford here being named "Big Crossings." Another climb over Briery Mountain brought the traveler down into Great Meadows, the largest tract of open land in the Alleghanies. By a zigzag climb of five miles the summit of the last of the Alleghany ranges--Laurel Hill--was reached, where the path turned northward and followed the line of hills, by Christopher Gist's clearing on what is known as Mount Braddock, toward the lower Youghiogheny, and forded at "Stewart's Crossing." Thence the trail ran down the point of land where Pittsburg now lies between the "Forks of the Ohio." [Illustration: WASHINGTON'S ROAD] Christopher Gist, whom Washington engaged as guide, knew well this "Road of Iron" through the mountain, and perhaps was the first white man to travel it who left record of it. On July 16, 1751, he had been commissioned by the committee of the Ohio Company to visit their grant of land in the West, and, among other things, "to look out & observe the nearest & most convenient Road you can find from the Company's Store at Will's Creek to a Landing at Mohongeyela."[1] The path started from the buildings Hugh Parker had erected for the Ohio Company in 1750 on land purchased from Lord Fairfax.[2] It followed the course outlined to Laurel Hill; here it left what was perhaps the main trail to the Ohio, and bore westward to the Monongahela river which it touched at Redstone Old Fort (Brownsville, Pa.) It was the course of the shortest portage between the Potomac and Monongahela.