THE FRENCH SURPRISE LOG’S TOWN.

Having thus exhibited a succinct view of the British colonies in North America, for the information of the reader, we shall now resume the thread of our history, and particularize the transactions by which the present year was distinguished on this extensive continent. The government of England having received nothing but evasive answers from the court of France, touching the complaints that were made of the encroachments in America, despatched orders to all the governors of that country to repel force by force, and drive the French from their settlements on the river Ohio. Accordingly, the provinces of Virginia and Pennsylvania took this important affair into their consideration; but while they deliberated, the French vigorously prosecuted their designs on the other side of the mountains. They surprised Log’s Town, which the Virginians had built upon the Ohio; made themselves masters of the Block-house and Truck-house, where they found skins and other commodities to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, and destroyed all the British traders, except two who found means to escape. At the same time, M. de Contrecour, with a thousand men and eighteen pieces of cannon, arrived in three hundred canoes from Venango, a fort they had raised on the banks of the Ohio, and reduced by surprise a British fort which the Virginians had built on the forks of the Monangahela, that runs into the same river.