Finally Gist succeeded in keeping him sober a day, and yet, as he said, reasonably intoxicated with promises of great gifts; and so at last, on December 16, we gladly bade farewell and set out in our birch canoes to go down French Creek.
A cannon was fired, and the officers assembled on shore saluted us politely as we left the fort. The commandant sent one canoe loaded with strong liquors to be used on the way, and at Venango to overcome the wits of Tanacharisson.
Each of us, Gist and Van Braam and Davidson, was seated very comfortably in the middle of a canoe of birch bark; at the bow and stern were Indians or half-breeds, and, as the water was very rapid most of the way, they used poles of ash to hold and guide the canoes. On the 18th December we were no longer comfortable. The ice was thick, and we had all of us to wade and, in places, to portage. On the 22d we came to a strong rapid. Gist advised to land and portage the provisions. This we did, and, being arrived before the French canoes, stood to watch them descend, a fine sight. About half-way the man on the bow of one canoe――that with the liquors――caught his pole between two rocks. He should have let it go; but as he did not, the boat slued square to the stream and, filling, turned over, so that all the brandy was lost, to my satisfaction. The men got out, with no great ease, swearing oaths, both French and Indian.
It rained and froze, and when, at fall of night, we came to Venango on December 22, we were cased in ice like men in armour. I was never more glad of a fire.
Here Captain Chabert de Joncaire set to work again to convince my Half-King with the bottle. But by good luck the sachem was much disordered in his stomach because of the rum he had of St. Pierre, and when Gist persuaded him the French had bewitched the liquor, he would none of it. Here we found our horses, but very lean, and, after a rest, set out by land from Venango, over a bad trail, this being about December 25.
It was a horrible journey, the men getting frozen feet and the packhorses failing, until, in despair at the delay, on the third day, against Gist’s advice, I left Van Braam to follow me with the horses and men, and determined to strike through the woods by compass to the Forks of the Ohio, and thus be enabled the sooner to report to the governor.