he bitter cold of the
wind for several hours, while the magistrates were getting houses and
food and clothing ready for them.

This whole campaign was wonderful, and on almost every day some strange
thing happened; but, perhaps, the strangest of all the events in this
winter war was that which is shown in the picture. Pichegru, learning
that there was a fleet of the enemy's vessels lying at anchor near the
island of Texel, sent a column of cavalry, with some cannon, in that
direction, to see if anything could be done. The cavalry found the
Zuyder Zee hard frozen, and the ships firmly locked in the ice. So they
put spurs to their horses, galloped over the frozen surface of the sea,
marched up to the ships, and called on them to surrender. It was a new
thing in war for ships to be charged by men on horseback; but there the
horsemen were, with strong ice under them, and the ships could not sail
away from them. The sailors could make a fight, of course, but the
cavalry, with their cannon, were too strong for them, and so they
surrendered without a battle, and for the first time in history a body
of hussars captured a squadron of ships at anchor.

[Illustration: CAPTURE OF THE DUTCH FLEET BY THE SOLDIERS OF THE FRENCH
REPUBLIC.]

YOUNG WASHINGTON IN THE WOODS.

THE STORY OF A PERILOUS JOURNEY.

No man ever lived whose name is more honored than that of George
Washington, and no man ever deserved his fame more. All the success that
ever came to him was won by hard work. He succeeded because he was the
kind of man that he was, and not in the least because he had "a good
chance" to distinguish himself. He never owed anything to "good luck,"
nor even to a special education in the business of a soldier. Some men
are called great because they have succeeded in doing great things; but
he succeeded in doing great things because he was great in himself.

Everybody who knew him, even as a boy, seems to have respected as well
as liked him. There was something in his character which made men think
well of him. When he was only sixteen years of age Lord Fairfax admired
him to such a degree that he appointed him to a post which not many men
would have been trusted to fill. He put the boy at the head of a
surveying party, and sent him across the mountains to survey the valley
of Virginia--a vast region which was then unsettled. So well did
Washington perform this difficult and dangerous task that a few years
later, when he wa