Boys Book of Famous Soldiers | Page 4

sometimes six pistoles."
This would indicate that he was a thrifty lad, honestly pleased with
honest earnings--and no mere adventurer.
About this time, a company was formed, called the Ohio Company, for
the purpose of opening a trade route through northern Virginia and
Maryland. George Washington's two elder brothers, Lawrence and
Augustine, were interested in the 'enterprise'; and they naturally called
in their young surveyor brother to consultation. The project sounded
fascinating, but presented many elements of danger. The French were
becoming more and more active, and making warlike preparations to
seize and hold all the western frontier. In order to develop and hold this
land against the French and their Indian allies, it was necessary to place
the work in the hands of a military leader.
George Washington was at this time only nineteen years old, but fully

grown--a man of powerful physique, hardened and seasoned by his
outdoor life. Despite his youth and lack of military experience, the
Ohio Company secured for him the appointment of adjutant general of
this district. Washington at once placed himself under several military
officers of his acquaintance, among them a Major Muse, and soon
acquired at least the rudiments of warfare, the manual of arms. The
broader school of tactics he was to acquire for himself in the field of
experience.
An interruption to his military career came in the illness of his brother
Lawrence. A voyage to the West Indies was determined upon, for the
invalid, and George accompanied him--on the young man's first sea
voyage, and of which he has left us entertaining glimpses in his
ever-faithful diary. But after a winter in the South Seas, Lawrence grew
worse and was brought home to die. George, though only twenty, was
made one of the executors to the estate, Mount Vernon, which became
henceforth his home.
Shortly afterward, we find George Washington given still higher office,
but one which entailed heavy responsibilities. The newly appointed
governor of the state, Robert Dinwiddie, growing uneasy at the
constant reports of alliances between the French and Indians,
determined to send a commissioner to the French commander, to ask by
what right he was building forts in English dominions; and also to treat
with the Indians, in the way of counter proposals against the French.
It was a hazardous mission, and one which also involved tact,
diplomacy, and a first-hand knowledge of the wilderness. But we are
not much surprised to find Washington, at twenty-one, given the
commission of major and sent on this undertaking.
Leaving Williamsburg with a little company of six, he set out on a
cross-country trip by horseback, of more than a thousand miles. The
details of this adventurous journey make interesting reading, but cannot
find place in this necessarily brief story. They reached an Indian village
near where the city of Pittsburgh now stands, then turned south to the
junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers where dwelt a
friendly tribe of Indians. Thence they went to Fort le Boeuf, where the

French commander received the Virginia major politely, entertained
him, but tried at the same time to win his Indian friends away from
him.
The return journey was terrible. The horses had become so weak that
they were useless except as light pack animals. The little party
struggled along on foot. Washington with one companion went on
ahead. It was the dead of winter, but when they reached the Ohio River,
they found that instead of its being frozen solid, as they had hoped, it
was a turbulent mass of tossing cakes of ice.
"There was no way of getting over," writes 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, that it jerked me out into ten feet of 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