a sol-dier, tried
to make his moth-er let him join the na-vy, as he was too young to go to
the war. But this moth-er was a ver-y wise wo-man, and said no; that his
place was at home un-til he knew how to care for the great plan-ta-tion
and the ma-ny slaves that in five or six years would be his.

Now, at this time, this great land of ours was so wild that it was hard
to tell how much land a man owned, just where one great farm end-ed and
the next be-gan; and a man who knew the land so well that he could tell
folks just these things would be of much use; so George now be-gan to
give much time to just this work; and so well did he do it that soon
folks came to him when they were in doubt.

In fact this work led, as you shall see, straight up to the
pres-i-dent's seat. His broth-er Law-rence had mar-ried Anne Fair-fax,
and in their home at Mt. Ver-non George met ma-ny great men; a-mong
oth-ers was Lord Thom-as Fair-fax, who owned a piece of land so large
that he did not know how big it was; he sent George to find this out;
and now this young boy had a rough piece of real work to do.

In March, 1748, he and a young friend, George Wil-liam Fair-fax, left
the ease of Mt. Ver-non to live in the wild woods, where they would see
on-ly Indians, or, at the best, rough white men; in the log huts of the
white men they found so much dirt that, af-ter one tri-al, rath-er than
sleep on dir-ty straw, with no sheet, and but one torn, thin blan-ket,
they ei-ther lay on the bare floor, near the big wood-fire, or else
built a huge fire in the woods and lay close to it on the earth. They
had to swim their hors-es o-ver streams; they shot wild deer and birds,
and of-ten cooked and ate them, alone in the great wild woods, far from
e-ven the camp of the In-di-ans. Once, at least, we know, from a little
book in which each night George wrote of what they had done that day,
that they saw a grand war-dance of the In-di-ans; the mu-sic by which
they danced was made by a pot half full of wa-ter, with a deer-skin
o-ver the top, and a gourd filled with shot; this must have made queer
mu-sic to dance by.

[Illustration: MOUNT VERNON--THE HOME OF WASHINGTON.]

The boys were gone six weeks, and did their work so well that the
gov-ern-or heard of it, and he made George a "pub-lic sur-vey-or;" that
is, it was his place to find out the size of all the new farms; and his
word was to be law. He must have done this work well, too, for the lines
which he l