that fort. As the journal states, this company spent the first night out with Colonel Joshua Fry. Fry too was one of them in spirit, though he did not accompany them westward. He was a graduate of Oxford University, joint author with Jefferson of Fry and Jefferson's celebrated Map of Virginia, and a commissioner for the crown in establishing the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia. He was killed by being thrown from his horse while taking command of Washington's expedition against Fort Duquesne, four years later. These statistics show plainly that the best brain and blood of Virginia was foremost in attempting to realize Virginia's dream of conquest and expansion.
But it was a time for brave men to show themselves. Ambitious Virginia had been slow to claim the West, where even at this early date Frenchmen had gone so far into the wilderness. Céloron, bold emissary of the humpbacked Canadian Governor Gallissonière, was now burying leaden plates at the mouths of the rivers which emptied into the Ohio, as a sign of French possession of the West. One of these was placed
