Page:The youth of Washington (1910).djvu/140



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,