The Life of George Washington. Woodrow Wilson
the rivers were swollen and ugly with the rains and melting snows from off the mountains, where there was scarcely a lodging to be had except in the stray, comfortless cabins of the scattered settlers, or on the ground about a fire in the open woods, and where a woodman's wits were needed to come even tolerably off. But there was a strong relish in such an experience for Washington, which did not wear off with the novelty of it. There is an unmistakable note of boyish satisfaction in the tone in which he speaks of it. "Since you received my letter in October last," he writes to a young comrade, "I have not sleep'd above three nights or four in a bed, but, after walking a good deal all the day, I lay down before the fire upon a little hay, straw, fodder, or bear-skin, whichever is to be had, with man, wife, and children, like a parcel of dogs and cats; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire. ... I have never had my clothes off, but lay and sleep in them, except the few nights I have lay'n in Frederick Town." For three years he kept steadily at the trying business, without loss either of health or courage, now deep in the forests laboriously laying off the rich bottom lands and swelling hill-sides of that wild but goodly country between the mountains, now at Greenway Court with his lordship, intent upon the busy life there,—following the hounds, consorting with huntsmen and Indians and traders, waiting upon the ladies who now and again visited the lodge; when other occupations failed, reading up and down in his lordship's copy of the Spectator, or in the historians who told the great English story. His first success in surveying brought him frequent employment in the valley. Settlers were steadily making their way thither, who must needs have their holdings clearly bounded and defined. Upon his lordship's recommendation and his own showing of what he knew and could do, he obtained appointment at the hands of the President and Master of William and Mary, the colony's careful agent in the matter, as official surveyor for Culpeper County, "took the usual oaths to his Majesty's person and government," and so got for his work the privilege of authoritative public record.
Competent surveyors were much in demand, and, when once he had been officially accredited in his profession, Washington had as much to do both upon new lands and old as even a young man's energy and liking for an independent income could reasonably demand. His home he made with his brother at Mount Vernon, where he was always so welcome; and he was as often as possible with his mother at her place upon the Rappahannock, to lend the efficient lady such assistance as she needed in the business of the estate she held for herself and her children. At odd intervals he studied tactics, practised the manual of arms, or took a turn at the broadsword with the old soldiers who so easily found excuses for visiting Major Washington at Mount Vernon. But, except when winter weather forbade him the fields, he was abroad, far and near, busy with his surveying, and incidentally making trial of his neighbors up and down all the country-side round about, as his errands threw their open doors in his way. His pleasant bearing and his quiet satisfaction at being busy, his manly, efficient ways, his evident self-respect, and his frank enjoyment of life, the engaging mixture in him of man and boy, must have become familiar to everybody worth knowing throughout all the Northern Neck.
But three years put a term to his surveying. In 1751 he was called imperatively off, and had the whole course of his life changed, by the illness of his brother. Lawrence Washington had never been robust; those long months spent at the heart of the fiery South with Vernon's fever-stricken fleet had touched his sensitive constitution to the quick, and at last a fatal consumption fastened upon him. Neither a trip to England nor the waters of the warm springs at home brought him recuperation, and in the autumn of 1751 his physician ordered him to the Bahamas for the winter. George, whom he so loved and trusted, went with him, to nurse and cheer him. But even the gentle sea-air of the islands wrought no cure of the stubborn malady. The sterling, gifted, lovable gentleman, who had made his quiet seat at Mount Vernon the home of so much that was honorable and of good report, came back the next summer to die in his prime, at thirty-four. George found himself named executor in his brother's will, and looked to of a sudden to guard all the interests of the young widow and her little daughter in the management of a large estate. That trip to the Bahamas had been his last outing as a boy. He had enjoyed the novel journey with a very keen and natural relish while it promised his brother health. The radiant air of those summer isles had touched him with a new pleasure, and the cordial hospitality of the homesick colonists had added the satisfaction of a good welcome. He had braved the small-pox in one household with true Virginian punctilio rather than refuse an invitation to dinner, had taken the infection, and had come home at last bearing some permanent marks of a three weeks' sharp illness upon him. But he had had entertainment enough to strike the balance handsomely against such inconveniences, had borne whatever came in his way very cheerily, with that wholesome strength of mind which made older men like him, and would have come off remembering nothing but the pleasure of the trip had his noble brother only found his health again. As it was, Lawrence's death put a final term to his youth. Five other executors were named in the will; but George, as it turned out, was to be looked to to carry the burden of administration, and gave full proof of the qualities that had made his brother trust him with so generous a confidence.
His brother's death, in truth, changed everything for him. He seemed of a sudden to stand as Lawrence's representative. Before they set out for the Bahamas Lawrence had transferred to him his place in the militia, obtaining for him, though he was but nineteen, a commission as major and district adjutant in his stead; and after his return, in 1752, Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie, the crown's new representative in Virginia, added still further to his responsibilities as a soldier by reducing the military districts of the colony to four, and assigning to him one of the four, under a renewed commission as major and adjutant-general. His brother's will not only named him an executor, but also made him residuary legatee of the estate of Mount Vernon in case his child should die. He had to look to the discipline and accouterment of the militia of eleven counties, aid his mother in her business, administer his brother's estate, and assume on all hands the duties and responsibilities of a man of affairs when he was but just turned of twenty.
The action of the colonial government in compacting the organization and discipline of the militia by redoing the number of military districts was significant of a sinister change in the posture of affairs beyond the borders. The movements of the French in the West had of late become more ominous than ever; 'twas possible the Virginian militia might any day see an end of that "everlasting peace" which good Mr. Beverley had smiled to see them complacently enjoy, and that the young major, who was now Adjutant-General of the Northern Division, might find duties abroad even more serious and responsible than his duties at home. Whoever should be commissioned to meet and deal with the French upon the western rivers would have to handle truly critical affairs, decisive of the fate of the continent, and it looked as if Virginia must undertake the fateful business. The northern borders, indeed, were sadly harried by the savage allies of the French; the brunt of the fighting hitherto had fallen upon the hardy militiamen of Massachusetts and Connecticut in the slow contest for English mastery upon the continent. But there was really nothing to be decided in that quarter. The French were not likely to attempt the mad task of driving out the thickly set English population, already established, hundreds of thousands strong, upon the eastern coasts. Their true lines of conquest ran within. Their strength lay in their command of the great watercourses which flanked the English colonies both north and west. 'Twas a long frontier to hold, that mazy line of lake and river that ran all the way from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the wide months of the sluggish Mississippi. Throughout all the posts and settlements that lay upon it from end to end there were scarcely eighty thousand Frenchmen, while the English teemed upon the coasts more than a million strong. But the forces of New France could be handled like an army, while the English swarmed slowly westward, without discipline or direction, the headstrong subjects of a distant government they would not obey, the wayward constituents of a score of petty and jealous assemblies tardy at planning, clumsy at executing plans. They were still far away, too, from the mid-waters of the lakes and from the royal stream of the Mississippi itself, where lonely boats floated slowly down, with their cargoes of grain, meat, tallow, tobacco, oil, hides, and lead, out of the country of the Illinois, past the long, thin line of tiny isolated posts, to the growing village at New Orleans and the southern Gulf. But they were to be feared, none the less. If their tide once flowed in, the French well knew it could not be turned back again. It was not far away from the