to her other children. The thought of his being completely severed from her overcame even her resolute mind, and at her urgent remonstrances the nautical scheme was given up. To school, therefore, George returned, and continued his studies for nearly two years longer, devoting himself especially to mathematics, and accomplishing himself in those branches calculated to fit him either for civil or military service. Among these, one of the most important in the actual state of the country was land surveying. In this he schooled himself thoroughly, using the highest processes of the art; making surveys about the neighborhood, and keeping regular field-books, some of which we have examined, in which the boundaries and measurements of the fields surveyed were carefully entered, and diagrams made, with a neatness and exactness as if the whole related to important land transactions instead of being mere school exercises. Thus, in his earliest days there was perseverance and completeness in all his undertakings.. Nothing was left half done, or done in a hurried and slovenly manner. The habit of mind thus cultivated

continued throughout life; so that however complicated his tasks and overwhelming his cares, in the arduous and hazardous situations in which he was often placed, he found time to do everything, and to do it well.

In one of these manuscript memorials of his practical studies and exercises there are evidences in his own handwriting that before he was fifteen years of age he had conceived a passion for some unknown beauty, so serious as to disturb his otherwise wellregulated mind, and to make him unhappy. Why this juvenile attachment was a source of unhappiness we have no means of ascertaining. Perhaps the object of it may have considered him a mere school-boy, and treated him as such, or his own shyness may have been in his way. Even in later years he was apt to be silent and embarrassed in female society. "He was a very bashful young man," said an old lady, whom he used to visit when they were both in their nonage. "I used often to wish that he would talk more."

WASHINGTON LEARNING SURVEYING.

George took a final leave of school in the autumn of 1747, and went to reside with his brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon. Here he continued his mathematical studies and his practice in surveying. Though by no means of a poetical temperament, the waste pages of his journal betray several attempts to pour forth his sorrows in verse. They are mere commonplace rhymes, such as lovers of his age are apt to write, in which he bewails his " poor restless heart, wounded by Cupid's dart," and "bleeding for one who remains pitiless of his griefs and woes."

The tenor of some of his verses induces us to blieve that he never told his love; but, as we have already surmised, was prevented by his bashfulness.

"Ah, woe is me, that I should love and conceal;

Long have I wished and never dare reveal."

It is difficult to reconcile oneself to the idea of the cool and sedate Washington, the great champion of American liberty, a woe-worn lover in his youthful days, "sighing like furnace," and inditing plaintive verses about the groves of Mount Vernon. We are glad of an opportunity, however, of penetrating to his native feelings, and finding that under his studied decorum and reserve he had a heart of flesh throbbing with the warm impulses of human nature.

Being a favorite of Sir William Fairfax, he was now an occasional inmate of Belvoir. Among the persons at present residing there was Thomas, Lord Fairfax, cousin of William Fairfax, and of whose immense landed property the latter was the agent.

Another inmate of Belvoir at this time was George William Fairfax, about twentytwo years of age, the eldest son of the proprietor. He had been educated in England, and since his return had married a daughter of Colonel Carey, of Hampton, on James river. He had recently brought home his bride and her sister to his father's house.

The merits of Washington were known and appreciated by the Fairfax family. Though not quite sixteen years of age, he no longer seemed a boy, nor was he treated as such. Tall, athletic and manly for his years, his early self-training, and the code of conduct he had devised, gave a gravity and decision to his conduct; his frankness and modesty inspired cordial regard, aud the melancholy, of which he speaks, may have produced a softness in his manner calculated to win favor in ladies' eyes. According to his own account, the charms of Miss Carey, the sister of the bride, seem even to have caused a slight fluttering in his bosom; which, however, was constantly rebuked by the remembrance of his former passion-so at least we judge from letters to his youthful confidants, rough drafts of which are still to be seen in his telltale journal.

To one whom he addresses as his dear friend Robin, he writes: "My residence is at present at his lordship's, where I might, was my heart disengaged, pass my time very pleasantly, as there's a very agreeable young lady lives in the same house (Colonel George Fairfax's wife's sister); but as that's only adding fuel to fire, it makes me the more uneasy, for by often and unavoidably being in company with her, revives my former passion for your Lowland Beauty; whereas was I to live more retired from young women, I might in some measure alleviate my sorrows, by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in the grave of oblivion," etc.

Similar avowals he makes to another of his young correspondents, whom he styles "Dear friend John;' as also to a female confidante, styled "Dear Sally," to whom he acknowledges that the company of the “ very agreeable young lady, sister-in-law of Colonel George Fairfax," in a great measure cheers his sorrow and dejectedness.

The object of his early passion is not positively known. Tradition states that the "Lowland Beauty" was a Miss Grimes, of Westmoreland, afterward Mrs. Lee, and mother of General Henry Lee, who figured in Revolutionary history as "Light-Horse Harry," and was always a favorite with Washington, probably from the recollections of his early tenderness for the mother.

The possessions of Lord Fairfax beyond the Blue Ridge had never been regularly settled nor surveyed. Lawless intruders-squatters, as they were called--were planting themselves along the finest streams and in the richest valleys, and virtually taking possession of the country. Lord Fairfax desired to have these lands examined, surveyed, and portioned out into lots, preparatory to ejecting these interlopers or bringing them to reasonable terms. In Washington, notwithstanding his youth, he beheld one fit for the task -having noticed the exercises in surveying which he kept up while at Mount Vernon, and the aptness and exactness with which every process was executed. He was well calculated, too, by his vigor and activity, his courage and hardihood, to cope with the wild country to be surveyed, and with its still wilder inhabitants. The proposition had only to be offered to Washington to be eagerly accepted. It was the very kind of occupation for which he had been diligently training himself. All the preparations required by one of his simple habits were soon made, and it was in the month of March (1748), and just after he had completed his sixteenth year, that Washington set out on horseback on this surveying expedition, in company with George William Fairfax. Their route lay by

Ashley's Gap, a pass through the Blue Ridge, that beautiful line of mountains which as yet almost formed the western frontier of inhabited Virginia.

They entered the great valley of Virginia, where it is about twenty-five miles wide; a lovely and temperate region, diversified by gentle swells and slopes, admirably adapted to cultivation. The Blue Ridge bounds it on one side, the North mountain, a ridge of the Alleghanies, on the other; while through it flows that bright and abounding river, which, on account of its surpassing beauty, was named by the Indians the Shenandoah—that is to say, "the daughter of the stars."

The first station of the travelers was at a kind of lodge in the wilderness, where the steward, or land-bailiff, of Lord Fairfax resided, with such negroes as were required for farming purposes, and which Washington terms "his lordship's quarter." It was situated near the Shenandoah, about twelve miles from the site of the present town of Winchester. In a diary kept with his usual minuteness, Washington speaks with delight of the beauty of the trees and the richness of the land in the neighborhood, and of his riding through a noble grove of sugar-maples on the banks of the Shenandoah; and at the present day, the magnificence of the forests which still exist in.this favored region justifies his eulogium.

He looked around, however, with an eye to the profitable rather than the poetical. The gleam of poetry and romance, inspired by his "Lowland Beauty," occurs no more. The real business of life has commenced with him. His diary affords no food for fancy. Everything is practical. The qualities of the soil, the relative value of sites and localities, are faithfully recorded. In these his early habits of observation and his exercises in surveying had already made him a proficient.

His surveys commenced in the lower part of the valley, some distance above the junction of the Shenandoah with the Potomac, and extended for many miles along the former river. Here and there partial "clearings" had been made by squatters and hardy pioneers, and their rude husbandry had produced abundant crops of grain, hemp and tobacco; civilization, however, had hardly yet entered the valley, if we may judge from the note of a night's lodging at the house of one of the settlers-Captain Hite, near the site of the present town of Winchester. Here, after supper, most of the company stretched themselves in backwoods style before the fire; but Washington was shown into a bedroom. Fatigued with a hard day's work at surveying, he soon undressed; but instead of being nestled between sheets in a comfortable bed, as at the maternal home or at Mount Vernon, he found himself on a couch of matted straw, under a threadbare blanket, swarming with unwelcome bed-fellows. After tossing about for a few moments, he was glad to put on his clothes again, and rejoin his companions before the fire.

Such was his first experience of life in the wilderness; he soon, however, accustomed himself to "rough it," and adapt himself to fare of all kinds, though he generally preferred a bivouac before a fire, in the open air, to the accommodations of a woodman's cabin. Proceeding down the valley to the banks of the Potomac, they found that river so much swollen by the rain which had fallen among the Alleghanies as to be unfordable.

After watching in vain for the river to subside, they procured a canoe, on which they crossed to the Maryland side, swimming their horses. A weary day's ride of forty miles up the left side of the river, in a continual rain, and over what Washington pronounces the worst road ever trod by man or beast, brought them to the house of a Colonel Cresap, opposite the south branch of the Potomac, where they put up for the night.

Here they were detained three or four days by inclement weather. On the second day they were surprised by the appearance of a war party of thirty Indians, bearing a scalp as a trophy. A little liquor procured the spectacle of a war-dance. A large space was cleared, and a fire made in the center, round which the warriors took their seats. The principal orator made a speech, reciting their recent exploits, and rousing them to triumph. One of the warriors started up as if from sleep, and began a series of movements, half grotesque, half tragical; the rest followed. For music, one savage drummed on a deerskin, stretched over a pot half filled with water; another rattled a gourd containing a few shot, and decorated with a horse's tail. Their strange outcries, and uncouth forms and garbs, seen

by the glare of the fire, and their whoops and yells, made them appear more like demons than human beings. All this savage gambol was no novelty to Washington's companions, experienced in frontier life; but to the youth, fresh from school, it was a strange spectacle, which he sat contemplating with deep interest, and carefully noted down in his journal. More than two weeks were now passed by them in the wild mountainous

regions of Frederick county, and about the south branch of the Potomac, surveying lands and laying out lots, camped out the greater part of the time, and subsisting on wild turkeys and other game. Each one was his own cook; forked sticks served for spits, and chips of wood for dishes. The weather was unsettled. At one time their tent was blown down; at another they were driven out by smoke; now they were drencl.ed with rain, and now the straw on which Washington was sleeping caught fire, and he was awakened by a

companion just in time to escape a scorching. The only variety to this camp life was a supper at the house of one Solomon Hedge, Esquire, his majesty's justice of the peace, where there were no forks at table, nor any knives, but such as the guests brought in their pockets.

"I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed," writes Washington to one of his young friends at home, "but after walking a good deal all the day I have lain down before the fire upon a little straw or fodder, or a bearskin, whichever was to be had, with man, wife and children, like dogs and cats; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire."

Having completed his surveys, on April 12th he found himself once more at Mount Vernon. For his services he received, according to his note-book, a doubloon per day when actively employed, and sometimes six pistoles. A pistole is $3.60.

The manner in which he had acquitted himself in this arduous expedition, and his accounts of the country surveyed, gave great satisfaction to Lord Fairfax, who shortly afterward moved across the Blue Ridge, and took up his residence at the place heretofore noted as his "quarters." Here he laid out a manor, containing ten thousand acres of arable grazing-lands, vast meadows and noble forests, and projected a spacious manorhouse, giving to the place the name of Greenway Court.

It was probably through the influence of Lord Fairfax that Washington received the appointment of public surveyor. This conferred authority on his surveys, and entitled them to be recorded in the county offices; and so invariably correct have these surveys been found that, to this day, wherever any of them stand on record, they receive implicit credit.

For three years he continued in this occupation, which proved extremely profitable, from the vast extent of the country to be surveyed and the very limited number of public

surveyors.

While thus employed for months at a time surveying the lands beyond the Blue Ridge, he was often an inmate of Greenway Court. The projected manor-house was never even commenced. On a green knoll, overshadowed by trees, was a long stone building one story in height, with dormer windows, two wooden belfries, chimneys studded with swallow and martin coops, and a roof sloping down, in the old Virginia fashion, into low projecting eaves that formed a veranda the whole length of the house. It was probably the house originally occupied by his steward, or land agent, but was now devoted to hospitable purposes and the reception of guests. As to his lordship, it was one of his many eccentricities that he never slept in the main edifice, but lodged apart in a wooden house not much above twelve feet square. In a small building was his office, where quitrents were given, deeds drawn, and business transacted with his tenants.

Here Washington had full opportunity, in the proper seasons, of indulging his foudness for field sports, and once more accompanying his lordship in the chase. The conversation of Lord Fairfax, too, was full of interest and instruction to an inexperienced youth, from his cultivated talents, his literary tastes and his past intercourse with the best society of Europe and its most distinguished authors. He had brought books, too, with him into the wilderness, and from Washington's diary we find that during his sojourn here he was diligently reading the history of England and the essays of the Spectator.

His rugged and toilsome expeditions in the mountains among rude scenes and rough people inured him to hardships, made him apt at expedients; while his intercourse with his cultivated brother, and with the various members of the Fairfax family, had a happy effect in toning up his mind and manners, and counteracting careless and self-indulgent habitudes of the wilderness.