"Sam": or The history of mystery./ By C. W. Webber.

CHAPTER XXIX.
Commencement of the final struggle between the French and English for
the country on the great Lakes and the Mississippi-Fourth Intercolo nial War.
WE come now to the fourth intercolonial war, in which
Washington, the first incarnation of Sam in moderate earthly
mould, makes his appearance upon a stage, the drama of
which is to fill the eye of the world-a drama, of which he
is to be the central figure.
We must again own our obligation to our admirable American historian for the narrative of this war.
Dr. Thomas Walker, of the council of Virginia, penetrating
through the mountainous south-eastern regions of that province, had reached and crossed the ridge which separates the
valley of the Tennessee from thv head waters of the more
northerly tributaries of the Ohio. To that ridge he gave
the name of Cumberland Mountains, after the Duke of Cumberland, of the English blood royal, just then very famous
by his victory over the Pretender, at Culloden. The name
of Cumberland was also given to one of the rivers flowing
down the western slope of that ridge. A more northerly
stream, called by Walker the Louisa, still preserves its aboriginal appellation of Kentucky, not, however, without conformity to the English idiom in a retraction of the accent
from the last to the second syllable. The region entered by
Walker, full of abrupt and barren mountains, attracted little
attention. The country about the head of the Ohio seemed
much more inviting.
An association of London merchants and Virginia land
speculators, known as the Ohio Company, obtained in England,
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