strategic military position of the Central West.
As in the first, so in the second act of the drama of 1750–1760, Washington was the chief figure. He signed the first treaty ever drawn up in the Central West, with old Van Braam and Villiers, in a misty rain at Fort Necessity. When, in quick succession, the French fortified the spot Washington's genius had selected for a British fort, and the brave bulldog Braddock came to his grave in the Monongahela forests, Washington was perhaps the most conspicuous personage at the bloody ford and battle-field.
When, then, in 1759, the young colonel took his bride, Martha Custis, to Mount Vernon, he was well acquainted with the West, though it might seem that thereafter its destiny and his were to be far apart. But not so. The days that were passed in his early struggles for fame and fortune were not forgotten. In the quiet of his farm life, and in the drowsy halls of legislation the man could still hear the rippling of the Alleghany streams and the soughing of those great forests, and many of his day-
