ble war. Virginia was divided into military districts, each of which was under the charge of an adjutant-general whose business it was to attend to the organization and equipment of the militia. George Washington was only nineteen years of age, but his brother Lawrence had such confidence in his ability that he secured for him the appointment of adjutant-general for the military district which included Mount Vernon. To hold such a post, one must be both a drillmaster and something of a tactician, as well as a natural leader and good manager. Washington went to work with a will to qualify himself for his place. His brother had served long enough in the army to be able to give him some help, and Lawrence's comrades in the West Indies campaigns could give even more explicit aid. One of these, Major Muse, was a frequent guest at Mount Vernon, and now undertook to teach George Washington the art of war. He lent the young adjutant military treatises, and drilled him in manual exercises. A Dutch soldier, Jacob Van Braam, who was making a living as fencing-master, gave him lessons in the sword exercise, and Washington had the opportunity afterward of doing his old teacher a good turn by securing him a position in the army of which Washington was an officer. While he was in the midst of all this military exercise, which was very well suited to the mind of one who had been captain of his school company, he was suddenly obliged to drop his sword and manual, and make ready for a voyage. Lawrence Washington, whose health had been impaired by his campaigning in the West Indies, was ill with consumption; and his physicians ordered him to take a voyage to the West Indies again,— this time to recover, if possible, the health which he had lost there when a soldier. He proposed to pass the winter at Barbadoes, and to take his brother George with him. The two brothers sailed near the end of September, 1751. George Washington, with his methodical habits, at once began a diary, which he kept on the voyage and during his stay on the island. As two gentlemen from Virginia, they were seized upon at once by the English officers and other residents, and treated with great hospitality. The people who live in a small and isolated settlement like that of Barbadoes are generally very glad to meet some one whom they have not seen every day the year around. So the two brothers dined with this and that new acquaintance, and George, being robust and not needing to spare himself, walked, rode, and drove over the island. Unfortunately, in the midst of his pleasure, he was seized with small-pox and obliged to keep by himself during the last part of his stay. Vac cination was not understood at that time, and there was nothing to be done, if the small-pox were about, but to have it and have it as lightly as possible. Washington had a strong constitution, and bore this trying illness well, but he carried some slight scars from the disease through the rest of his life. In his diary he recorded briefly the events of each day of his journey, but at the end of his stay, he filled a few pages with general reflections upon the life on which he had looked, and which was so different from that of Virginia. He was of a frugal mind himself and was amazed at the shiftless ways of the people of Barbadoes. "How wonderful," he says, "that such people should be in debt, and not be able to indulge themselves in all the luxuries as well as necessaries of life. Yet so it happens. Estates are often alienated for debts. How persons coming to estates of two, three, and four hundred acres (which are the largest) can want,—is to me most wonderful." The exactness which the young surveyor had shown in his plans and in his accounts is very apt to go with great prudence and economy. Up to this time he had had very little money besides what he had earned; but he shows in many ways that he had acquired the fundamental principle of sound living,― never spend money until you have earned it; and to this principle he held all his life. I know that prudence and economy are usually regarded as habits which one acquires by careful training, and so they may be. But with George Washington I suspect these traits were inborn and very nearly allied to genius. He had a genius for order and method; it did not sparkle like a genius for wit or imagination, but one must not think less of it for that reason. Because he was so careful and correct, some people thought him mean and close; but he could afford to be thought so, if his carefulness and correctness kept him scrupulously honest. After the two brothers had been on the island about six weeks, Lawrence Washington, with the uneasiness of an invalid, was sure that he should be better off in Bermuda, and he resolved to go there as soon as the spring opened. But he longed to see his family, and accordingly sent his brother back to Virginia, intending that he should return later to Bermuda with Mrs. Washington. George had a stormy passage, and reached Virginia in February. There he awaited orders from his brother. But Lawrence Washington, with the caprice and changing mood of a consumptive, could not make up his mind what he most wanted,— whether to send for his wife or to go home himself. At last his disease increased so rapidly as to alarm him, and he hastened home, reaching Mount Ver non only a short time before his death, which took supplies into the debatable territory, and was place in July, 1752. busily engaged in winning over the Indians. Moreover, it was said that he had seized certain English traders and sent them, prisoners, to France. As soon as news of this reached Governor Dinwiddie, he determined to send a commissioner to the officer in command of the French forces, and ask by what right Frenchmen were building forts in the King's dominions, and what they were intending to do; why they had made prisoners of peaceable Englishmen; and as the two nations were not at war, why French soldiers were invading English territory. Moreover the commissioner was to see the Indian chiefs and make sure that they did not form an alliance with the French. He left a wife and one daughter. It is a sign both of his confidence in bis brother George and of his love for him, that he made him, though only twenty years old, one of the executors of his will, and his heir in case his daughter should not live to be of age. As George Washington was more familiar with his brother's affairs than any one else, the other executors left the management of the estate almost entirely to him. From this time, Mount Vernon was his home,- though it must have been a melancholy home at first; for he had looked up to his elder brother since he was a boy, and now it was as if a second father and a dear companion had died. CHAPTER VIII. MAJOR WASHINGTON. FOR a while George Washington was closely occupied with settling his brother's estate, but he was obliged to busy himself with public affairs also; for there were growing rumors of French movements to the westward, and to these Virginia, as one of the nearest colonies and most concerned, was bound to pay special heed. Robert Dinwiddie, a Scotchman and surveyor of customs in Virginia, had just been appointed lieutenant-governor, which at that time meant resident and acting governor. As a new broom sweeps clean, he was immediately very active. Virginia was divided into four military districts and the militia put into active training. Washington had shown himself so capable before, that he was again appointed adjutantgeneral, with the rank of major; and one of the districts, including the northern counties, was assigned to him. It was not in the colonies alone that preparations went on. The colonies were a part of the British empire, and a blow struck at them by the French in America was an attack on England by France. England, therefore, sent out cannon and powder to Virginia, and instructed the governor to make all speed and build two forts on the Ohio river, in order to secure the country against French occupation. But the French had moved before the English. In military affairs, the general who is first on the ground usually has a great advantage; the French were a more military people than the English; the whole occupation by the French in America was an occupation by soldiers; and so, while the English ministry and Governor Dinwiddie and the Virginia militia were making ready to start, the Governor of Canada had dispatched troops and It was no slight matter for any one to undertake such an errand. He must know something of the country; he must be used to Indians; he must be a person whom the French would respect; above all, he must be strong of body, courageous, prudent, wise, and on the alert; for the journey would be a severe one, and the messenger would need to have what is called a "level head." The King's officers in Virginia would have to act on such information as he brought: how many Frenchmen there were in the Ohio country; how many more were on the way; what they were doing; what were their plans. Of course no one expected that the French commandant would kindly sit down and tell the Virginian commissioner what he meant to do; the commissioner must find that out by his own sagacity. Now the persons who were most immediately concerned were the members of the Ohio Company. Indeed, it was largely through their agency that the Governor of Virginia, who himself was a stockholder, had moved in the matter. Lawrence Washington was dead, but Augustine Washington was interested, and the younger brother, George, had charge of Lawrence Washington's affairs. He knew perfectly what interests were at stake. Besides, he was a backwoodsman; it was no novelty for him to follow trails through the forest; he could deal with Indians; and above all, he had shown himself a clear-headed, far-sighted young man, whom every one instinctively trusted. He was one of His Majesty's officers, for he was AdjutantGeneral of the Northern District; and so, though Major George Washington was but twenty-one years old, Governor Dinwiddie and his council selected him for this delicate and weighty mission. It was no summer jaunt on which he set out. He waited upon the Governor at Williamsburg, and was armed with papers duly signed and sealed with the great seal of Virginia, giving him authority as commissioner. On October 30, 1753, he left Williamsburg with a journey of more Gist knew the way as far as an Indian village called Logstown, on the banks of the Ohio, about seventeen miles from where Pittsburg now stands; there they were to call together the Indian chiefs and confer with them. It had been raining and snowing so heavily in the mountains, that they were a week making their way to the Monongahela River at Turtle Creek. Here they found the river so swollen that they saw it was impossible to cross with their pack-horses. Accordingly, they sent all their baggage down the river in a canoe, under charge of two of the men, while the rest swam their horses across and rode down to the rendezvous at the fork of the Ohio, ten miles below. * The Ohio Company had proposed to build a fort about ten miles away from the junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany; here lived a friendly Indian, Shingiss, and that may have determined their plans. But Washington, who reached the fork of the rivers before the canoe, began at once to look over the ground, and decided without hesitation that the real site for the fort should be the point of land which lay between the two rivers. Shingiss went on with the party to Logstown, and there Washington staid five days, conferring with the Indian chiefs and gathering information from some French deserters who happened there. He was impatient to go forward to the French forts, but he knew something of Indian ways, and he was learning more. The chiefs sat and talked and smoked, and were silent, and shook their heads, and said it was a serious matter. Serious, indeed, it was to the poor Indians, for the French had already told them that they were coming in force in the spring to drive the English out of the country; but if the English proved too strong for that, then French and English would agree and divide the land between them. As in that case, the Indians would have small favor, the French advised the chiefs to side with them against the English. At last Washington persuaded the Indians to let three of their chiefs and an old hunter accompany his party to where the French were, and they followed the Alleghany to Venango, now Franklin in Venango County, Pennsylvania, where were a few Frenchmen who had driven out an English trader. But the really important station was Fort le Bœuf. entertained him for a few days with hospitality, but in the meantime did his utmost to win from Washington the Indian chiefs who had accompanied him. Finally, however, M. de Saint Pierre drew up a formal reply to Governor Dinwiddie's letter, and Washington and his party returned by canoe to Venango, having sent the horses and baggage on in advance. Now began a terrible journey. The horses were so weak, but so necessary for carrying the baggage, that Washington and his companions set out on foot, while the horses followed behind. Washington was dressed as an Indian, and for three days they kept on in this way, the horses losing strength, the cold increasing, and the roads growing worse. Then Washington, seeing how slowly the party was moving, determined to take Gist with him, and push through the woods, the nearest way, leaving the rest of the company together with the horses and baggage under charge of Van Braam to follow as well as they could. It was the day after Christmas when he started. He put his journal and other papers into a pack which he strapped to his back, wrapped himself in a stout coat, took his gun in his hand and set off alone with Gist. They were only a few miles from Venango, and they meant to follow the path a short distance to an Indian village called Murdering Town, and then go by the compass through the woods in as straight a line as possible to the fork of the Ohio. The village was well-named; for shortly after they had left it, they were fired at by a French Indian whom they had taken along there as a guide. They pretended to think that his gun went off for some other reason; but they kept him with them, watching him very closely all day till nine o'clock that night. Then they sent him home. But they knew well that he would rally his friends and pursue them; so they walked all that night and the next day, reaching the Ohio river at dark, and fested there over night. They supposed, of course, that they should find the river frozen tight and could cross on the ice, but to their dismay, it was frozen only near the shore, while blocks of ice were swirling down the middle of the stream. "There was no way of getting over," says Washington in his journal, "but on a raft, which we set about, with but one poor hatchet, and finished just after sun-setting. This was a whole day's work; we next got it launched, then went on board of it, and set off; but before we were half-way over, we were jammed in the ice in such a manner that we expected every moment our raft to sink and ourselves to perish. I put out my setting-pole to try to stop the raft, that the ice might pass by, when the rapidity of the stream threw it with so much violence against the pole * For points mentioned in this paper, see map on page 279 of February ST. NICHOLAS. The Frenchmen tried to entice the Indians from Washington, and otherwise to keep him from going on; but he insisted on carrying out his plans, and toiled for four more days though mire and snowdrifts until he came to the fort. The French commandant, M. de Saint Pierre, received the Virginian commissioner politely, and that it jerked me out into ten feet water; but I fortunately saved myself by catching hold of one of the raft-logs. Notwithstanding all our efforts, we could not get to either shore, but were obliged, as we were near an island, to quit our raft and make to it. The cold was so extremely severe, that Mr. Gist had all his fingers and some of his toes frozen, and the water was shut up so hard that we found no difficulty in getting off the island on the ice in the morning, and went to Mr. Frazier's." Dinwiddie. But no time was to be lost, and the energetic governor and council issued orders to erect a fort at once upon the point of land at the fork of the Ohio, which Washington had recommended as the best site. Washington was to have command of the two companies of men who were to be enlisted for this purpose, but he was to remain for the present at Alexandria, organizing the expedition, while his second in command, Captain Trent, a trader and frontiersman, went Here they succeeded in getting horses, and in a forward with such men as he could raise in the few days Washington was at Williamsburg and reporting to the Governor. He had not merely made a very difficult journey in the depth of winter and brought back an answer to the Governor's letter; but he had made the most minute observations of the condition and plans of the French; he had also strengthened the friendship of the English and Indians; and by patient, unwearied and resolute attention to the object of his mission, he had brought back a fund of extremely valuable information for the use of the colony. There could be no doubt in the minds of his friends, after reading his journal, that here was a man who could be depended upon. They had known him as a prudent, careful, eco WASHINGTON DELIVERS GOVERNOR DINWIDDIE'S LETTER TO THE FRENCH COMMANDANT. nomical, deliberate, rather silent young fellow, whose judgment was worth having; but I doubt if they had fully perceived before what indomitable courage he had, how fearless he was in the midst of danger, how keen and wary in his dealing with an enemy, and how full of resources and pluck when difficulties arose. Here was no sunshine soldier. CHAPTER IX. FORT DUQUESNE AND FORT NECESSITY. THE House of Burgesses was not in session when Washington made his report to Governor back settlements, and began the construction of the fort. Lord Fairfax took a lively interest in his young friend's business, but it was not so easy to enlist men for an expedition of this kind, as it was to raise and drill a company of militia, which by the laws of the colony could not be marched more than five miles from the boundary line of the colony. Throughout the winter months Washington was hard at work raising his company and putting them in readiness. He had a sorry lot of volunteers to work with; they were for the most part shiftless fellows who had nothing else to do, |