In a letter written about this time to Colonel Stanwix, who commanded in the middle colonies, he said, "You will excuse me, sir, for saying, that I think there never was, and perhaps never again will be, so favourable an opportunity as the present for reducing fort Du Quesne.

Several prisoners have made their escape from the Ohio this spring, and agree in their accounts, that there are but three hundred men left in the garrison; and I do not conceive that the French are so strong in Canada, as to reinforce this place, and defend themselves at home this campaign: surely then this is too precious an opportunity to be lost." But Mr.Pitt did not yet direct the councils of Britain; and a spirit of enterprise and heroism did not yet animate her generals.

The campaign to the north was inglorious; and to the west, nothing was even attempted, which might relieve the middle colonies.
{October 8.} Large bodies of savages, in the service of France, once more spread desolation and murder over the whole country, west of the Blue Ridge.
The regular troops were inadequate to the protection of the inhabitants; and the incompetency of the defensive system to their security became every day more apparent.

"I exert every means," said Colonel Washington, in a letter to Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie, "to protect a much distressed country; but it is a task too arduous.

To think of defending a frontier of more than three hundred and fifty miles extent, as ours is, with only seven hundred men, is vain and idle; especially when that frontier lies more contiguous to the enemy than any other.
"I am, and for a long time have been, fully convinced, that if we continue to pursue a defensive plan, the country must be inevitably lost." {October 24.} In another letter he said, "The raising a company of rangers, or augmenting our strength in some other manner, is so far necessary, that, without it, the remaining inhabitants of this once fertile and populous valley will scarcely be detained at their dwellings until the spring.