GE WASHINGTON[25]

BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN AND NORA A. SMITH

All this time while George Washington had been growing up,--first a
little boy, then a larger boy, and then a young surveyor,--all this time
the French and English and Indians were unhappy and uncomfortable in the
country north of Virginia. The French wanted all the land, so did the
English, and the Indians saw that there would be no room for them,
whichever had it, so they all began to trouble each other, and to
quarrel and fight.

These troubles grew so bad at last that the Virginians began to be
afraid of the French and Indians, and thought they must have some
soldiers of their own ready to fight.

George Washington was only nineteen then, but everybody knew he was wise
and brave, so they chose him to teach the soldiers near his home how to
march and to fight.

Then the king and the people of England grew very uneasy at all this
quarreling, and they sent over soldiers and cannon and powder, and
commenced to get ready to fight in earnest. Washington was made a major,
and he had to go a thousand miles, in the middle of winter, into the
Indian and French country, to see the chiefs and the soldiers, and find
out about the troubles.

When he came back again, all the people were so pleased with his
courage and with the wise way in which he had behaved, that they made
him lieutenant-colonel.

Then began a long war between the French and the English, which lasted
seven years. Washington fought through all of it, and was made a
colonel, and by and by commander of all the soldiers in Virginia. He
built forts and roads, he gained and lost battles, he fought the Indians
and the French; and by all this trouble and hard work he learned to be a
great soldier.

In many of the battles of this war, Washington and the Virginians did
not wear a uniform, like the English soldiers, but a buckskin shirt and
fringed leggings, like the Indians.

From beginning to end of some of the battles, Washington rode about
among the men, telling them where to go and how to fight; the bullets
were whistling around him all the time, but he said he liked the music.

By and by the war was over; the French were driven back to their own
part of the country, and Washington went home to Mount Vernon to rest,
and took with him his wife, lovely Martha Washington, whom he had met
and married while he was fighting the French and Indians.

While he was at Mount Vernon he saw all his horses a