mes
River. He had recently brought home his bride and her sister to his
father's house.

The merits of Washington were known and appreciated by the Fairfax
family. Though not quite sixteen years of age, he no longer seemed a
boy, nor was he treated as such. Tall, athletic, and manly for his
years, his early self-training, and the code of conduct he had
devised, gave a gravity and decision to his conduct; his frankness and
modesty inspired cordial regard. Lord Fairfax was a staunch
fox-hunter, and kept horses and hounds in the English style. The
hunting season had arrived. The neighborhood abounded with sport; but
fox-hunting in Virginia required bold and skilful horsemanship. He
found Washington as bold as himself in the saddle, and as eager to
follow the hounds. He forthwith took him into peculiar favor; made him
his hunting companion; and it was probably under the tuition of this
hard-riding old nobleman that the youth imbibed that fondness for the
chase for which he was afterwards remarked.

This fox-hunting intercourse was attended with important results. His
lordship's possessions beyond the Blue Ridge had never been regularly
settled nor surveyed. Lawless intruders--squatters, as they were
called--were planting themselves along the finest streams and in the
richest valleys, and virtually taking possession of the country. It
was the anxious desire of Lord Fairfax to have these lands examined,
surveyed, and portioned out into lots, preparatory to ejecting these
interlopers or bringing them to reasonable terms. In Washington,
notwithstanding his youth, he beheld one fit for the task. The
proposition had only to be offered to Washington to be eagerly
accepted. It was the very kind of occupation for which he had been
diligently training himself. All the preparations required by one of
his simple habits were soon made, and in the month of March, 1748,
just after he had completed his sixteenth year, Washington set out on
horseback, in company with George William Fairfax.

Their route lay by Ashley's Gap, a pass through the Blue Ridge, that
beautiful line of mountains which, as yet, almost formed the western
frontier of inhabited Virginia. They entered the great valley of
Virginia, where it is about twenty-five miles wide; a lovely and
temperate region, diversified by gentle swells and slopes, admirably
adapted to cultivation. The Blue Ridge bounds it on one side, the
North Mountain, a ridge of the Alleghanies, on the