he game their guns had brought down, wrap their
cloaks around them, and sleep heartily under the broad blanket of the
open air.

Thus they journeyed on up the Shenandoah until they reached the point
where its waters flow into the Potomac. Then up this stream they made
their way, crossing the mountains and finally reaching the place which
is now called Berkeley Springs. It was then in the depth of the
wilderness, but in time a town grew up around it, and many years
afterward Washington and his family often went there in the summer to
drink and bathe in its wholesome mineral waters.

The surveyors had their adventures, and no doubt often made the woodland
echoes ring with the report of their guns as they brought down partridge
or pheasant, or tracked a deer through the brushwood. Nothing of special
note happened to them, the thing which interested them most being the
sight of a band of Indians, the first they had ever seen. The red men
had long since disappeared from the part of Virginia in which they
lived.

These tenants of the forest came along one day when the youths had
stopped at the house of a settler. There were about thirty of them in
their war-paint, and one of them had a fresh scalp hanging at his belt.
This indicated that they had recently been at war with their enemies, of
whom at least one had been killed. The Indians were given some liquor,
in return for which they danced their war-dance before the boys. For
music one of them drummed on a deer-skin which he stretched over an iron
pot, and another rattled a gourd containing some shot and ornamented
with a horse's tail. The others danced with wild whoops and yells around
a large fire they had built. Altogether the spectacle was a singular and
exciting one on which the boys looked with much interest.

While they had no serious adventures, their life in the forest was not a
very luxurious one. In many ways they had to rough it. At times they
were drenched by downpours of rain. They slept anywhere, now and then in
houses, but most often in the open air. On one occasion some straw on
which they lay asleep caught fire and they woke just in time to escape
being scorched by the flames.

"I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed," wrote George to
a friend, "but after walking a good deal all the day I have lain down
before the fire on a little straw or fodder, or a bear-skin, whatever
was to be had, with man, wife, and children, like dogs and cats; an