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90 three years on the frontier for nothing. He had heard of these French—of their bold invasion of the West, their growing trade, their cunning conciliation of the Indian, their sudden passion for fort building when they heard of the grant of land to the Ohio Company, to which his brothers belonged. Let who can doubt that he looked with envious eyes upon those fearless fleets of coureurs-de-bois and their woodland pilgrimaging. Who can doubt that the few stolid English traders who went over the mountains on poor Indian ponies made a sorry showing beside these roistering, picturesque, irrepressible Frenchmen who knew and sailed the sweet rivers of the great West? But the forests were filled with their sly, red-skinned proselytes. One swift rifle ball might easily be sent from a hidden covert to meet the stripling envoy from the English who was come to spy out the land and report both its giants and its grapes. Yet, after one day's preparation, he was ready to leave a home, rich in comfort and culture, a host of warm friends, and bury himself five hundred miles deep in the