bringing negroes from Africa for more than a hundred years, and now
nearly half the people in Virginia were blacks.

Very often, also, poor white men from England were sold as slaves for a
few years in order to pay for their passage across the ocean. When their
freedom was given to them they continued to work at whatever they could
find to do; or they cleared small farms in the woods for themselves, or
went farther to the west and became woodsmen and hunters.

There was but very little money in Virginia at that time, and, indeed,
there was not much use for it. For what could be done with money where
there were no shops worth speaking of, and no stores, and nothing to
buy?

The common people raised flax and wool, and wove their own cloth; and
they made their own tools and furniture. The rich people did the same;
but for their better or finer goods they sent to England.

For you must know that in all this country there were no great mills for
spinning and weaving as there are now; there were no factories of any
kind; there were no foundries where iron could be melted and shaped into
all kinds of useful and beautiful things.

When George Washington was a boy the world was not much like it is now.

* * * * *

II.--HIS HOMES.

George Washington's father owned a large plantation on the western shore
of the Potomac River. George's great-grandfather, John Washington, had
settled upon it nearly eighty years before, and there the family had
dwelt ever since.

This plantation was in Westmoreland county, not quite forty miles above
the place where the Potomac flows into Chesapeake Bay. By looking at
your map of Virginia, you will see that the river is very broad there.

On one side of the plantation, and flowing through it, there was a
creek, called Bridge's Creek; and for this reason the place was known as
the Bridge's Creek Plantation.

It was here, on the 22d of February, 1732, that George Washington was
born.

Although his father was a rich man, the house in which he lived was
neither very large nor very fine--at least it would not be thought so
now.

It was a square, wooden building, with four rooms on the ground floor
and an attic above.

The eaves were low, and the roof was long and sloping. At each end of
the house there was a huge chimney; and inside were big fireplaces, one
for the kitchen and one for the "great room" where visitors were
received.

But George did not l