However, Washington was treated "with the greatest Complaisance" by Joncaire. During the evening the Frenchmen "dosed themselves pretty plentifully," wrote the sober, keen-eyed Virginian, "and gave a License to their Tongues. They told me, That it was their absolute Design to take Possession of the Ohio, and by G— they would do it: For that although they were sensible the English could raise two Men for their one; yet they knew, their Motions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any Undertaking of theirs." For a true picture of this Washington (who is said to be forgotten) what one would be chosen before this: a youth from Virginia sitting before the log fire in a German's cabin from which the French had driven its owner, on the Allegheny river; about him are sitting leering, tipsy Gauls, bragging with oaths of a conquest they were never to make; he is dressed for a five-hundred-mile ride through a wilderness in winter, and his sober eyes rest thoughtfully upon the crackling logs while the oaths and boasts and smell of foreign liquor fill the hot and heavy air. No picture could show better the
