Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln | Page 5

Belvoir. He was sixty years old, and had lately come from
England to look after his lands in Virginia; for he was the owner of
many thousands of acres among the mountains and in the wild woods.

Sir Thomas was a courtly old gentleman, and he had seen much of the
world. He was a fine scholar; he had been a soldier, and then a man of
letters; and he belonged to a rich and noble family.
It was not long until he and George were the best of friends. Often they
would spend the morning together, talking or surveying; and in the
afternoon they would ride out with servants and hounds, hunting foxes
and making fine sport of it among the woods and hills.
And when Sir Thomas Fairfax saw how manly and brave his young
friend was, and how very exact and careful in all that he did, he said:
"Here is a boy who gives promise of great things. I can trust him."
Before the winter was over he had made a bargain with George to
survey his lands that lay beyond the Blue Ridge mountains.
I have already told you that at this time nearly all the country west of
the mountains was a wild and unknown region. In fact, all the western
part of Virginia was an unbroken wilderness, with only here and there a
hunter's camp or the solitary hut of some daring woodsman.
But Sir Thomas hoped that by having the land surveyed, and some part
of it laid out into farms, people might be persuaded to go there and
settle. And who in all the colony could do this work better than his
young friend, George Washington?
It was a bright day in March, 1748, when George started out on his first
trip across the mountains. His only company was a young son of
William Fairfax of Belvoir.
The two friends were mounted on good horses; and both had guns, for
there was fine hunting in the woods. It was nearly a hundred miles to
the mountain-gap through which they passed into the country beyond.
As there were no roads, but only paths through the forest, they could
not travel very fast.
After several days they reached the beautiful valley of the Shenandoah.
They now began their surveying. They went up the river for some
distance; then they crossed and went down on the other side. At last
they reached the Potomac River, near where Harper's Ferry now stands.
At night they slept sometimes by a camp-fire in the woods, and
sometimes in the rude hut of a settler or a hunter. They were often wet
and cold. They cooked their meat by broiling it on sticks above the
coals. They ate without dishes, and drank water from the running
streams.

One day they met a party of Indians, the first red men they had seen.
There were thirty of them, with their bodies painted in true savage style;
for they were just going home from a war with some other tribe.
The Indians were very friendly to the young surveyors. It was evening,
and they built a huge fire under the trees. Then they danced their
war-dance around it, and sang and yelled and made hideous sport until
far in the night.
To George and his friend it was a strange sight; but they were brave
young men, and not likely to be afraid even though the danger had been
greater.
They had many other adventures in the woods of which I cannot tell
you in this little book--shooting wild game, swimming rivers, climbing
mountains. But about the middle of April they returned in safety to
Mount Vernon.
It would seem that the object of this first trip was to get a general
knowledge of the extent of Sir Thomas Fairfax's great woodland
estate--to learn where the richest bottom lands lay, and where were the
best hunting-grounds.
The young men had not done much if any real surveying; they had been
exploring.
George Washington had written an account of everything in a little
note-book which he carried with him.
Sir Thomas was so highly pleased with the report which the young men
brought back that he made up his mind to move across the Blue Ridge
and spend the rest of his life on his own lands.
And so, that very summer, he built in the midst of the great woods a
hunting lodge which he called Greenway Court. It was a large, square
house, with broad gables and a long roof sloping almost to the ground.
When he moved into this lodge he expected soon to build a splendid
mansion and make a grand home there, like the homes he had known in
England. But time passed, and as the lodge was