active boy gladly consented to undertake, for he liked nothing better than wild life and adventure in the wilderness, and here was the chance to have a delightful time in a new and beautiful country, an opportunity that would warm the heart of any live and healthy boy.

This is a long introduction to the story of Washington's wildwood outing, but no doubt you will like to know what brought it about. It was in the early spring of 1748 that the youthful surveyor set out on his ride, the blood bounding warmly in his veins as he thought of the new sensations and stirring adventures which lay before him. He was not alone. George William Fairfax, a son of the master of Belvoir, went with him, a young man of twenty-two. Washington was then just sixteen, young enough to be in high spirits at the prospect before him. He brought his surveyors' instruments, and they both bore guns as well, for they looked for some fine sport in the woods.

The valley beyond the mountains was not the land of mystery which it had been thirty-four years before, when Governor Spotswood and his gay troop looked down on it from the green mountain summit. There were now some scattered settlers in it, and Lord Fairfax had built himself a lodge in the wilderness, which he named "Greenway Court," and where now and then he went for a hunting excursion.

Crossing the Blue Ridge at Ashby's Gap and fording the bright Shenandoah, the young surveyors

made their way towards this wildwood lodge. It was a house with broad stone gables, its sloping roof coming down over a long porch in front. The locality was not altogether a safe one. There were still some Indians in that country, and something might stir them up against the whites. In two belfries on the roof hung alarm-bells, to be rung to collect the neighboring settlers if report of an Indian rising should be brought.

On the forest road leading to Greenway Court a white post was planted, with an arm pointing towards the house, as a direction to visitors. As the post decayed or was thrown down by any cause another was erected, and on this spot to-day such a post stands, with the village of White Post built around it. But when young Washington and Fairfax passed the spot only forest trees stood round the post, and they rode on to the Court, where they rested awhile under the hospitable care of Lord Fairfax's manager.

It was a charming region in which the young surveyors found themselves after their brief term of rest, a land of lofty forests and broad grassy openings, with the silvery river sparkling through their midst. The buds were just bursting on the trees, the earliest spring flowers were opening, and to right and left extended long blue mountain-ranges, the giant guardians of the charming valley of the Shenandoah. In those days there were none of the yellow grain-fields, the old mansions surrounded by groves, the bustling villages and towns which now

HOME OF MARY WASHINGTON, FREDERICKSBURG, VA. Purchased by George Washington for his mother.

mark the scene, but nature had done her best to make it picturesque and beautiful, and the youthful visitors enjoyed it as only those of young blood can.

Up the banks of the Shenandoah went the surveyors, measuring and marking the land and mapping down its leading features. It was no easy work, but they enjoyed it to the full. At night they would stop at the rude house of some settler, if one was to be found; if not, they would build a fire in the woods, cook the 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.