much of it ultimately found its way to the West India market. A
tradition--much quoted--has it that barrels marked "George Washington,
Mount Vernon," were accepted in the islands without any inspection, but
Mr. J.M. Toner, one of the closest students of Washington's career,
contended that this was a mistake and pointed to the fact that the
Virginia law provided for the inspection of all flour before it was
exported and the placing of a brand on each barrel. However this may be,
we have Washington's own word for it, that his flour was as good in
quality as any manufactured in America--and he was no boaster.

[ILLUSTRATION: Dogue Run below the Site of the Mill]

[ILLUSTRATION: On the Road to the Mill and Pohick Church]

That his flour was so good was in large measure due to the excellent
quality of the wheat from which it was made. By careful attention to his
seed and to cultivation he succeeded in raising grain that often
weighed upward of sixty pounds to the bushel. After the Revolution he
wrote: "No wheat that has ever yet fallen under my observation exceeds
the wheat which some years ago I cultivated extensively."

His idea of good cultivation in these years was to let his fields lie
fallow at certain intervals, though he also made use of manure, marl,
etc., and in 1772 tried the experiment of sowing two bushels of salt per
acre upon fallow ground, dividing the plot up into strips eight feet in
width and sowing the alternate strips in order that he might be able to
determine results.

He imported from England an improved Rotheran or patent plow, and,
having noticed in an agricultural work mention of a machine capable of
pulling up two or three hundred stumps per day, he expressed a desire
for one, saying: "If the accounts are not greatly exaggerated, such
powerful assistance must be of vast utility in many parts of this wooden
country, where it is impossible for our force (and laborers are not to
be hired here), between the finishing of one crop and preparations for
another, to clear ground fast enough to afford the proper changes,
either in the planting or farming business."

These were his golden days. He was not so rich as he was later nor so
famous, but he was strong and well and young, he had abundant friends,
and his neighbors thought well enough of him to send him to the
Burgesses and to make him a vestryman of old Pohick Church; if he felt
the need of recreation he went fishing or fox-hunting or attended