arduous kind, yet, in a new country, both very useful and very profitable. Practically experienced in the art of surveying, Washington was asked by Lord Fairfax to undertake the mapping out and determining the sites and boundaries of his lordship's possessions, particularly beyond the Blue Ridge, in order to see if he could not bring to terms the squatters who had here and there taken up their residences on his lands, and also give encouragement to more reputable persons to settle in those fertile regions.
It was in March, 1748, when he had just completed his sixteenth year, that Washington, accompanied by George Fairfax, set off, at the head, of a party, compass and chain in hand, to penetrate and map out an almost unbroken wilderness. This was precisely the sort of discipline to test his character, and give vigor to his constitution. Washington was soon accustomed to clamber precipices and wade morasses, to swim his horse over swollen streams, to sleep for nights under the canopy of heaven, wrapped up in a bear-skin, and deem a seat by a blazing log-fire a place of luxury, to live hard and to work hard, to cook his own rough meal with a wooden fork, and to cope betimes with the wild forests and their wilder tenants.[1] Amidst trials such as these, he fulfilled his task so successfully, as to obtain the post of public surveyor, which he continued to discharge for three years to the entire satisfaction of all concerned. The confidence reposed in him soon led to his promotion to higher duties, and at the early age of nineteen, he was chosen to the command of one of the military districts into which Virginia was divided, in consequence of probable troubles with the French on the Ohio. The post was one of importance, and gave him the rank of major, and the pay of £150 a year: the duties were, to attend to the organization and equipment of the militia. Washington, as usual, set to work with energy and vigor in the discharge of his new responsibilities.
His brother Lawrence's health, always delicate, now became critical, and George accompanied him in a voyage to Barbadoes to try the efficacy of that climate. They sailed on the 28th of September, 1751; at first, the promise of benefit was flattering, and George returned, early in 1752, to bring out his brother's wife
- ↑ At the very time of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the woods of Virginia sheltered the youthful George Washington, the son of a widow. Born by the side of the Potomac, beneath the roof of a Westmoreland farmer, almost from infancy his lot bad been the lot of an orphan. No academy had welcomed him to its shade, no college crowned him with its honors: to read, to write, and to cipher these had been his degrees in knowledge. And now, at sixteen years of age, in quest of an honest maintenance, encountering intolerable toil. . . . . . . . . .this stripling surveyor in the woods, with no companions but his unlettered associates, and no implements of service but his compass and chain, contrasted strangely with the imperial magnificence of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. And yet God had selected, not Kaunitz, nor Newcastle, not a monarch of the house of Hapsburg, nor of Hanover, but the Virginia stripling, to give an impulse to human affairs, and, as far as events can depend on an individual, had placed the rights and destines of countless millions in the keeping of the widow's son."—Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. iii. pp. 467.8.
