hen George started out on his first
trip across the mountains. His only company was a young son of William
Fairfax of Belvoir.

The two friends were mounted on good horses; and both had guns, for
there was fine hunting in the woods. It was nearly a hundred miles to
the mountain-gap through which they passed into the country beyond. As
there were no roads, but only paths through the forest, they could not
travel very fast.

After several days they reached the beautiful valley of the Shenandoah.
They now began their surveying. They went up the river for some
distance; then they crossed and went down on the other side. At last
they reached the Potomac River, near where Harper's Ferry now stands.

At night they slept sometimes by a camp-fire in the woods, and sometimes
in the rude hut of a settler or a hunter. They were often wet and cold.
They cooked their meat by broiling it on sticks above the coals. They
ate without dishes, and drank water from the running streams.

One day they met a party of Indians, the first red men they had seen.
There were thirty of them, with their bodies painted in true savage
style; for they were just going home from a war with some other tribe.

The Indians were very friendly to the young surveyors. It was evening,
and they built a huge fire under the trees. Then they danced their
war-dance around it, and sang and yelled and made hideous sport until
far in the night.

To George and his friend it was a strange sight; but they were brave
young men, and not likely to be afraid even though the danger had been
greater.

They had many other adventures in the woods of which I cannot tell you
in this little book--shooting wild game, swimming rivers, climbing
mountains. But about the middle of April they returned in safety to
Mount Vernon.

It would seem that the object of this first trip was to get a general
knowledge of the extent of Sir Thomas Fairfax's great woodland
estate--to learn where the richest bottom lands lay, and where were the
best hunting-grounds.

The young men had not done much if any real surveying; they had been
exploring.

George Washington had written an account of everything in a little
note-book which he carried with him.

Sir Thomas was so highly pleased with the report which the young men
brought back that he made up his mind to move across the Blue Ridge and
spend the rest of his life on his own lands.

And so, that very summer, he built in the midst of the gr