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 120 Collision in the West. [1749- governors to those of Pennsylvania and Virginia showed that the back- woodsmen were no self-interested alarmists. The temper of the colonies chiefly concerned remained however wholly apathetic to a danger they scarcely realised. The question was beyond the limited vision of the average colonist, the scene of these forward movements too remote, the movements themselves were too insig- nificant. Having regard to the self-absorbed isolation that distinguished the nature of his life for the most part, one can hardly be surprised at his apathy. He could not easily divine what by the light of history seems to us now so clear, that the momentous question whether France or England was to dominate North America was on the eve of settlement. Happily there were some far-sighted men upon the spot who rose superior to colonial indifference, and thus while divining the future supported their views with energetic action. Conspicuous among these was Din- widdie, Deputy Governor of Virginia. In 1753 he despatched George Washington, then a capable, promising youth of twenty-one, to warn off the French in their turn as interlopers. With the co-operation of some of his fellow-governors he followed up this futile formality by a strong appeal to the English ministry to have regard to the gravity of the situation. The answer was a permission to repel force by force, but it was accompanied by no promise of assistance. A small sum however was wrung from the reluctant and half-sceptical legislators of Virginia, and a handful of provincial troops was sent to construct a fort at the forks of the Ohio river a spot soon to become one of famous and ensanguined memory and now buried among the roaring furnaces of Pittsburg. This was but a challenge. The French, pouring southward in small bodies through the shaggy forests that clothed this whole country, soon succeeded in driving these rustic sappers back. In the following summer the English retaliated with a provincial force of some four hundred men led by Washington. A brisk skirmish of vanguards, in which the French were captured and their leader killed, made a stir throughout North America and caused much talk in Europe. Soon afterwards Washington and his rough levies, after fighting behind entrenchments for the whole of a rainy July day against overwhelming numbers, surrendered on favourable terms at the Great Meadows and were permitted to return to Virginia. This was in 1754. The two nations were nominally still at peace and were to maintain for some time the curious fiction. The voice of Din- widdie however and the rifle-practice of the French at the Great Meadows had not fallen on deaf ears in England, and preparations were made for more serious movements. Meanwhile it will be well to say a few words about an American province of England that lay, physically and politi- cally, outside the old colonial group, but which was to play no insignifi- cant part in the coming war. Nova Scotia, then more often called Acadia, thrusting its rugged coast line far out into the Atlantic between Canada and the New England colonies, was of vastly more importance than its