on, crossing the swollen Potomac and surveying the hilly
country of what is now Frederick County.

It was a rough and hazardous trip lasting over a month, but one that
left them fit and seasoned woodsmen. They had learned what it was to
shift for themselves; to defend themselves against prowling beasts in
an untrodden wilderness; to swim swollen currents; to be wet and cold
and hungry; to come suddenly upon a war party of Indians, who would not
have scrupled to kill them, had the savages known that these two youths
were plotting and dividing up the hunting grounds which they claimed as
their own.

That all these things were a part of their experience we note from
jottings made briefly but methodically by Washington in his diary of
the trip. As to the survey itself, a Virginia title attorney remarked,
many years afterward, that in clearing up old titles the lines surveyed
by Washington were more reliable than any others of their day.

Lord Fairfax was so pleased with its results that he procured for his
protege an appointment as public surveyor. It was his induction into
three years of hard frontier life, which was the finest possible
schooling to him, for his later career as soldier. We find him writing
to a friend:

"Since you received my letter of October last, I have not slept above
three or four nights in a bed, but after walking a good deal all the
day, I have lain down before the fire upon a little hay, straw, 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. Nothing would make it pass off tolerably but a good reward. A
doubloon is my constant gain every day that the weather will permit of
my going out, and 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