It was a glorious region of stately woods, fertile valleys, clear
running streams, and lofty mountains, where our young surveyor, with
the exception of the winter months, spent the next three years of his
life. At first, not being accustomed to such severe privations and
exposure, it had gone rather hard with him: but he soon became inured
to them; and it was, no doubt, to this rough experience in the
wilderness, that he owed, in large measure, his uncommon vigor and
activity of body, and that firm reliance on the resources of his own
mind, which enabled him to endure and overcome those hardships,
trials, and difficulties which beset him throughout the greater
portion of his after-life. This severe training was also of another
advantage to him, in making him perfectly familiar with all that
region, in whose dark retreats and rugged wilds he learned, a few
years later, his first hard lessons in the art of war.
With all its privations, it was a life he loved to lead; for it
afforded him the means of an independent support: and a happy boy was
he, when first he wrote his mother that he was earning from fifteen
to twenty dollars for every day he worked. Besides this, the beauty
and grandeur of Nature's works, everywhere visible around him,
awakened in him feelings of the truest delight; and he would sometimes
spend the better part of a summer's day in admiring the tall and
stately trees, whose spreading branches were his only shelter from the
dews of heaven, and heat of noonday. At night, after supper, when his
companions would be talking over the adventures of the day just past,
or laughing boisterously at some broad joke repeated for the hundredth
time, or would be joining their voices in the chorus of some rude
woodland song, our young surveyor would be sitting a little apart on
the trunk of a fallen tree, pencil and paper before him, calculating
with a grave countenance, and by the ruddy light of a blazing
pine-knot, the results of the day's labor. With no other companionship
than that of the wild Indians he fell in with from time to time, and
the rude, unlettered hunters around him, he must needs turn for
society to the thoughts that stirred within his own mind. Often would
he withdraw himself from the noisy mirth of his companions, and,
climbing to some lofty mountain-top, spend hours and hours rapt in the
contemplation of the wild and varied region, smiling in life and
beauty far, far beneath him. At such times, we can imagine his
countenance lit up with a sacred joy, and his soul rising in praise
and thanksgiving to the great Father, who, in love and wisdom, made
this glorious world for the good and happiness of all that dwell
therein.
Now and then, for the sake of a refreshing change, he would leave the
wilderness behind him, with all its toils and dangers, and betake him
to Greenway Court, the woodland home of old Lord Fairfax, with whom he
had become a great favorite, and was ever a welcome guest. Here he
would spend a few weeks in the most agreeable manner you can well
imagine; for the old lord, being a man of some learning and extensive
reading, had collected, in the course of a long life, a large library
of the best and rarest books, from which, during these three years,
George derived great pleasure and much valuable information. Besides
this, a keener fox-hunter than this odd old bachelor was not to be
found in all the Old Dominion; and, for the full enjoyment of this
sport, he always kept a pack of hounds of the purest English blood. At
the first peep of dawn, the cheerful notes of the hunter's horn, and
the deep-mouthed baying of the fox-hounds, filling the neighboring
woods with their lively din, would call our young surveyor from his
slumbers to come and join in the sports of the morning. Waiting for no
second summons, he would be up and out in a trice, and mounted by the
side of the merry old lord; when, at a signal wound on the bugle, the
whole party would dash away, pell-mell, helter-skelter, over the hills
and through the woods, up the hills and down them again, across the
brooks and along the winding river; hunters and horses hard on the
heels of the hounds, hounds hard on the heels of poor Renard, and poor
Renard cutting, cutting away for dear life.
During the three years thus employed, George made his home at Mount
Vernon, it being nearer and more convenient to his field of labor;
but, as often as his business would permit, he would go on a visit to
his mother at the old homestead on the Rappahannock, whither, as I
should have told you before now, his father had removed when he was
but three or four years old. These were precious opportunities, ever
improved by him, of extending to her that aid in the management of her
family affairs, which to receive from him was her greatest pleasure,
as well as his truest delight to give.
About this time, he formed a habit of writing down in a diary or
day-book such facts and observations as seemed to him worthy of note,
by which means he would be enabled to fix firmly in his mind whatever
might prove of use to him at a future day. This is a most excellent
habit; and I would earnestly advise all young persons, desirous of
increasing their stock of knowledge, to form it as soon as they begin
the study of grammar and can write a good round hand. The following is
a specimen of this diary, written by him at the age of sixteen, as you
will see by the date therein given:--
"March 13th, 1748.--Rode to his lordship's (Lord Fairfax's)
quarter. About four miles higher up the Shenandoah, we went
through most beautiful groves of sugar-trees, and spent the
better part of the day in admiring the trees and richness of
the land.
"14th.--We sent our baggage to Capt. Hite's, near Fredericktown;
and went ourselves down the river about sixteen miles (the
land exceedingly rich all the way, producing abundance of
grain, hemp, and tobacco), in order to lay off some land on
Cole's Marsh and Long Marsh.
"15th.--Worked hard till night, and then returned. After
supper, we were lighted into a room; and I, not being so good a
woodsman as the rest, stripped myself very orderly, and went
into the bed, as they called it; when, to my surprise, I found
it to be nothing but a little straw matted together, without
sheet or any thing else, but only one threadbare blanket, with
double its weight of vermin, I was glad to get up and put on my
clothes, and lie as my companions did. Had we not been very
tired, I am sure we should not have slept much that night. I
made a promise to sleep so no more; choosing rather to sleep in
the open air, before a fire.
"18th.--We travelled to Thomas Berwick's on the Potomac, where
we found the river exceedingly high, by reason of the great
rains that had fallen among the Alleghanies. They told us it
would not be fordable for several days; it being now six feet
higher than usual, and rising. We agreed to stay till Monday.
We this day called to see the famed Warm Springs. We camped out
in the field this night.
"20th.--Finding the river not much abated, we in the evening
swam our horses over to the Maryland side.
"21st.--We went over in a canoe, and travelled up the Maryland
side all day, in a continued rain, to Col. Cresap's, over
against the mouth of the South Branch, about forty miles from
the place of starting in the morning, and over the worst road,
I believe, that ever was trod by man or beast."
In this diary, he also entered such items as these,--the number of
acres of each lot of land surveyed, the quality of the soil, the
growth of plants and trees, the height of the hills, the extent of the
valleys, and the length, breadth, and course of the streams. From the
items thus collected, he would draw the materials for the reports it
was his duty to submit, from time to time, for examination, to his
patron or employer; and such was the clearness, brevity, and exactness
displayed therein, and such the industry, skill, and fidelity with
which he performed his toilsome and difficult task, that the generous
old lord not only rewarded him handsomely for his services, but
continued to cherish for him through life a truly fatherly affection.
In after-years, Washington was wont to turn with peculiar fondness to
this period of his life, as perhaps affording the only leisure he had
ever known for sentimental musings, and the indulgence of what fancy
he may have had in those bright visions of future happiness, fame, or
enterprise; to which all men are more or less given during the
immature years of youth. This, to my mind, is to be easily enough
accounted for, if we but ascribe it to a certain little circumstance;
concerning which, as it exercised no small influence on his mind at
the time, I will now tell you all that is known, and, it may be, more
than ever can be known with possible certainty.
From a letter written by him at the age of fifteen, and also from some
sad and plaintive verses of his own composition found in his
copy-book, we learn that the boy, who should grow to become the
greatest man that ever made this glorious world of ours more glorious
with his wise precepts and virtuous example, was at this time a victim
of the tender passion called _love_, of which most of you little folks
as yet know nothing but the four letters that spell the word.
The object of this early attachment was a damsel, of whom nothing
certain is known, as her name, from the fact of its never being
repeated above a whisper, has not come down to our day, but who was
called by him in his confidential correspondence the Lowland Beauty.
As he had none of that self-assurance which lads of his age are apt to
mistake for pluck or spirit, he never ventured to make known the
secret of this passion to the object thereof; and it is probable, that
we, even at the big end of a hundred years, are wiser as to this
tender passage of his life than was ever the young lady herself. Not
having the courage to declare the sentiments that warmed his breast,
he wisely resolved to banish them from his mind altogether; and this,
I will venture to say, was one reason why he so readily accepted of
old Lord Fairfax's offer, and was willing for so long a time to make
his abiding-place in the wilderness. But it was months, and even
years, before he could get the better of his weakness, if such it
could be justly called; for a wilderness, let me tell you (and I hope
the hint will not be lost on my little friends), is the last place in
the world, that a man, or a boy either, should take to, as the
readiest means of ridding himself of such troublesome feelings. No
wonder, then, that our young surveyor was grave and thoughtful beyond
his years; and that the lonely forest, with its ever-changing beauties
and wild seclusion, viewed through the bewitched eyes of love, should
have had greater charms for him than the noisy, bustling haunts of
men. That you may have a more distinct idea of the appearance of
Washington at the time of which we are speaking, your Uncle Juvinell
will conjure up, from the lingering lights and shadows of his dull old
fancy, a little picture, to be gilded anew by your bright young
fancies, and hung up in that loftiest chamber of your memory which you
are wont to adorn with your portraits of the good and great men and
women who have blessed the earth, and of whom we love so much to read
and hear.
It is a summer morning, and the eastern mountains fling their shadows
long and huge across the lonesome valleys. Our little party of
surveyors, having spent the night on the summits of one of the less
lofty peaks of the Blue Ridge, are slowly descending its shrubby skies
to the more densely wooded parts of the wilderness below, of whose
waste fertility many a broad tract have they yet to explore, and many
a mile of boundary-line have chain and compass yet to measure and
determine. Still lingering on the summit far above, as loath to quit
the contemplation of the splendid prospect seen from thence, stands a
tall youth of eighteen, with his right arm thrown across his horse's
neck, and his left hand grasping his compass-staff. He is clad in a
buckskin hunting-shirt, with leggins and moccasons of the same
material,--the simple garb of a backwoodsman, and one that well
becomes him now, as in perfect keeping with the wildness of the
surrounding scenery; while in his broad leathern belt are stuck his
long hunting-knife and Indian tomahawk. In stature he is much above
most youths of the same age: he is of a handsome and robust form, with
high and strong but smooth features, light-brown hair, large blue
eyes,--not brilliant, but beaming with a clear and steady light, as if
a soul looked through them that knew no taint of vice or
meanness,--and a countenance all glorious with a truth and courage,
modest gentleness, and manly self-reliance; and as he thus lingers on
that lonely mountain-height, glorified as it were with the fresh pure
light of the newly risen sun, with head uncovered and looks reverent,
he seems in holy communion with his Maker, to whom, in the tender,
guileless years of childhood, a pious mother taught him to kneel,
morning and evening, in prayer, thanksgiving, and adoration.
Anon, his morning devotions ended, he turns to take, ere following his
companions down the mountain, another view of the varied panorama
spread out far beneath him, the chief feature of which is a valley,
surpassing in beauty and fertility any that that summer's sun will
shine on ere reaching his golden gateway in the west. Through this
valley, glimmering, half seen, half hid among the waving woods, runs a
river, with many a graceful bend, so beautiful, that, in the far-away
years of the past, some long-forgotten tribe of Indians called it
Shenandoah, or Shining Daughter of the Stars; a name that still
lingers like a sweet echo among the mountains. And as the eyes of the
young surveyor slowly range the wide prospect from point to point, and
take in miles and miles of beauty at a single stretch of view, there
is a look in them as if he would recall some pleasing dream of the
night, which he would now fain bring forth, though but a dream, to
refine and elevate the thoughts wherewith his mind must needs be
occupied throughout the day. He is familiar with every feature of the
landscape before him: he knows each shady dell and sunny hill, and
every grassy slope and winding stream; for there he has made his home
this many a day. He has seen it all a thousand times, and each time
with renewed delight. But now it has a glory not all its own, nor
borrowed from the morning sun, but from the first warm light of
youthful love that burns in his heart for his Lowland Beauty.