Page images
PDF
EPUB

trees, and spent the best part of the day in admiring the trees and the richness of the land." Very likely Lord Fairfax had himself visited his quarters before this, but I think he must have been further stirred by the reports which Washington brought of the country, for not long after he went to live there.

The place known as Lord Fairfax's Quarters, he now called Greenway Court, and he hoped to build a great manor-house in which he should live, after the style of an English earl, surrounded by his tenants and servants. He never built more than a house for his steward, however. It was a long story-and-a-half limestone building, the roof sloping forward so as to form a cover for the veranda, which ran the whole length of the house. The great Virginia outside chimneys were the homes of martins and swallows, and the house itself sheltered the steward and such chance guests as came into the wilderness. Upon the roof were two wooden belfries; the bells were to call the slaves to work, or to sound an alarm in case of an attack by Indians.

Lord Fairfax built for his private lodging a rough cabin only about twelve feet square, a short distance from the larger building. Here he lived the rest of his days. Upon racks on the walls were his guns, and close at hand choice books with which he kept alive his old taste for literature. His hounds walked in and out; and hither,

too, came backwoodsmen and Indians. He spent his time hunting and apportioning his great estate amongst the settlers, fixing boundary lines, making out leases, and arranging settlements with his tenants. He gave freely to all who came, but his own life was plain and simple. He kept up, however, in a curious way, his old relation with the fine world of London; for, though he dressed as a hunter, and almost as a backwoodsman, he sent every year to London for new suits of clothes of the most fashionable sort.

I suppose this was in part to enable him to appear in proper dress when he went to his friends' plantations; but perhaps also he wished to remind himself that he was still an English gentleman, and might, whenever he chose, go back to the Old World. But he never did go. He lived to see his young friend become general of the army raised to defend the colonies against the unlawful use of authority by the British crown. Lord Fairfax never believed it unlawful; but he was an old man; he took no part in the struggle, but he lived to hear of the surrender of Cornwallis and the downfall of the British power in the colonies; he received messages of love from the victorious general whom he had first started in the world; and he died soon after on December 12, 1781 — ninety years old.

[ocr errors]

It was this commission from Lord Fairfax to survey his lands which made the beginning of

Washington's public life. His satisfactory execu. tion of the task brought him an appointment from the governor as public surveyor. This meant that, when he made surveys, he could record them in the regular office of the county, and they would stand as authority if land were bought and sold. For three years now, he devoted himself to this pursuit, spending all but the winter months, when he could not well carry on field work, in laying out tracts of land up and down the Shenandoah Valley and along the Potomac.

A great deal depended on the accuracy of surveys; for if the surveyor made mistakes, he would be very likely to involve the persons whose land he surveyed in endless quarrels and lawsuits. People soon found out that Washington made no mistakes, and he had his hands full. Years afterward, a lawyer who had a great deal of business with land - titles in the new Virginia country declared that the only surveys on which he could depend were those of Washington.

The young surveyor, by his familiarity with the country, learned where the best lands lay, and he was quick to take advantage of the knowledge, so that many fine sections were taken up by him and others of his family and connections. He saw what splendid prospects the wilderness held out, and by contact with the backwoodsmen and the Indians, he laid the foundation of that broad knowledge of men and woodcraft which stood him

in such good stead afterward. He must have seemed almost like one of the Indians themselves, as he stood, grave and silent, watching them around their camp-fires.

His outdoor life, his companionship with rough men, and his daily work of surveying served to toughen him. They made him a self-reliant man beyond his years. People who saw him were struck by the curious likeness which his walk bore o that of the Indians. He was straight as an arrow, and he walked with his feet set straight out, moving them forward with the precision and care which the Indian uses. Especially did his long isolation in the wilderness confirm him in the habit of silence which he had as a boy and kept through life. Living so much by himself, he learned to think for himself and rely on himself.

Meanwhile, though his occupation was thus helping to form his character, he was still learning from his associates. There were three or four houses where he was at home. He went back to his mother at her plantation on the Rappahannock; he was a welcome guest at Belvoir; he visited Lord Fairfax in his cabin, and, as his diary shows, read his lordship's books as well as talked with the quaint old gentleman; and he always had a home with his brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon.

CHAPTER VII.

THE OHIO COMPANY.

WHETHER in the woods or at his friends' houses, George Washington was sure, at this time, to hear much talk of the country which lay to the westward. The English had their colonies along the Atlantic coast, and guarded the front door to the American continent. The French had their military posts along the St. Lawrence and the great lakes, and in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. They had entered the continent by other doors, and the two nations were like two families living in the same house, each wishing the whole premises and making ready to oust the other.

The French held their possessions in America chiefly by means of forts and trading-posts; the' English by means of farms and towns. So, while the French were busy making one fort after another in the interior, meaning to have a line from New Orleans to Quebec, the English were constantly clearing away woods and planting farms farther to the westward and nearer to the French forts. The great Appalachian mountain range kept the two people apart for a time, but English settlers were every year crossing the mountains,

« PreviousContinue »