Chapter III: Part 3

"The sea was my first choice, sir," was the answer. "My brother Lawrence got me a commission in the navy, but at the last minute mother asked me not to leave her. She has had hard times bringing us all up, and I felt, as the eldest, that I ought to stay at home; so I gave up my commission."

"That was hard," said Lord Fairfax, "and yet I think you did well. There should be openings for a young man in the colonies. It seems to me I heard that you were very fond of the surveyor's work."

The boy looked up quickly, and his bright eyes flashed. "So I am, sir. I have made surveys of all the fields near school, and have got the figures in my books at home. I should like very much to be a real surveyor."

"Well, George," said Lord Fairfax, "perhaps I can help you then. I've bought lands out west, the other side the Appalachians. It's a big tract I own, but I know little about it, and I'm told that men are settling out there and taking it up themselves. I should like to have it surveyed, and I think you're just the one to do it."

"I should like it above all things," said the boy, "if you think you can trust me to do the work properly."

Lord Fairfax smiled slightly as he looked down at his companion. He was apt to be somewhat amused at Washington's serious modesty. "I'll show you the plans after dinner. I almost wish I could go out there with you."

They were now nearing Belvoir, and the man put spurs to his horse and dashed across the intervening fields. The boy followed close behind, sitting his horse to perfection. Just before they reached Belvoir they came to a high hedge. Lord Fairfax put his horse at it and went flying over. A second later George had followed him. There was no feat of horsemanship to which he was not equal.

A little later dinner was served in the big dining-room at Belvoir. Lord Fairfax had his brother's family living with him, and with one or two friends who were apt to be staying at the house they made quite a large party. The long polished mahogany table gleamed with silver and glass. Candles on it and in sconces about the white paneled walls shed a pleasant lustre over the dinner party.

It was a time when men and women paid great attention to dress. The ladies wore light flowered gowns, and the men brilliant coats and knee-breeches, with lace stocks and white powdered hair. Their manners were of the courts of Europe, polished in the extreme, and they had all been trained to make an art of conversation. Negro servants waited on the table, and the noble lord presided at its head with something of the majesty of a medieval baron in his castle. There were young people present, and George sat with them, paying gallant speeches to the girls and telling stories of sport to the boys. He was a popular youth, having a singularly gentle manner which made him a great favorite with those of his own age.

After dinner Lord Fairfax took George to his study, and spread out the plans of his western estate. He told the boy just where to go and what to do, and George made notes in a small pocketbook, asking questions now and then which showed a remarkable knowledge of the surveyor's work.

"When can you start?" Lord Fairfax asked, as he finished with the plans.

"At once," said the boy, "if mother can spare me, and I think she can."

"Good. I'd like another hunt with you before you go, but when there's work afoot a man shouldn't tarry. The sooner you start the better."

A little later George was sleeping soundly in the guest-room above-stairs dreaming of the adventures he hoped soon to have.

On a March day in 1748 Washington set out with young George Fairfax, a nephew of the English lord, to make the surveying expedition. Their road led by Ashley's Gap, a deep pass through the Blue Ridge, that picturesque line of mountains which had so far marked the boundary of civilized Virginia.

When they reached the pass they found at its base a rapidly rising river. The melting snow which still lingered on the hilltops had swollen the stream and in places had made the road almost impassable. The two horsemen, by searching for fords, managed to make their way through the pass, and came out into the wide, smiling valley of Virginia, bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghanies. Here flowed that picturesque river called by the Indian name of Shenandoah, which means "the Daughter of the Stars."

The first stop the travelers made was at a rough lodge house where one of Lord Fairfax's bailiffs lived, and here the actual work of surveying began. Spring was rapidly coming, and young George Washington was by no means blind to the beauties of the country in that season. He tried, however, to look about him with a practical eye. He studied the valley for building sites. He examined the soil. He made carefully measured maps and drawings, after using his surveyor's rod and chain. When he had learned all that he wanted of this locality, he followed the valley down toward the Potomac, he and Fairfax camping out at nights under the trees, sleeping beside a watch-fire, and keeping ever on the alert for attack by Indians or wild animals.

When they had reached the river they found it so swollen with spring floods that there seemed no way of crossing it. Finally, however, they met an Indian with a birch-bark canoe and bargained with him to take them across. In this way, swimming their horses, they reached the Maryland side, and set out again westward.

Shortly after they had left the river they came to a planter's house where they stayed over night. The next day they were surprised by the arrival of a war party of thirty Indians carrying scalps won in battle. The planter knew how to treat the Indians, and soon made friends with them by offering them whiskey. George had seen little of the red men and begged them to hold a war-dance.

The white men and the red went out into a meadow and there built a fire, round which the braves took their seats. The chief made a speech telling of the tribe's deeds of valor, and calling on the warriors to win new triumphs. Gradually one by one the reclining members of the band rose and circled about the fire in a slow swinging step. Two Indians at a little distance beat upon a rough drum made of wood covered with deerskin and half filled with water.

As the chief's voice rose higher and higher and the music grew louder and louder, more and more men joined the dance, until finally all the tribe was dancing about the fire, and their pace grew ever faster. Now, from time to time, one would leap in the air uttering savage cries and yells, then another, and finally all seemed absolutely lost in a sort of demon's frenzy. Suddenly, at a sharp command from the chief, the dance and the music ceased, and the warriors came up to their white friends smiling and asking for more whiskey.

The scene made a deep impression on George Washington. So far he had lived only among white people, and knew little of the Indian in his native haunts, but from the date of this war-dance he began to study the red man's character, and before long he had become an expert in the art of dealing with these people.

For a month George and young Fairfax traveled through the land that belonged to the latter's uncle, and at the end of that time the boy had made practically a complete survey of the region. By the middle of April he was back at Belvoir. His plans were examined and approved, and he was well paid for his services.

So pleased was the Englishman with George's work that he used his efforts to get him the appointment of Public Surveyor. The position pleased the boy, who at once started to make maps of the whole region lying along the Potomac. He divided his time between his mother's simple house, the big house which his older half-brother, Lawrence, had built at Mount Vernon, and Lord Fairfax's seat at Belvoir. The strongest friendship had grown up between the nobleman and the boy, and George unquestionably profited greatly by his talks with this man, who was very fond of literature and art, and who had known the most distinguished men and women of Europe.

Belvoir had a fine library, and George spent much of his spare time there reading with special eagerness the history of England and Addison's essays in the _Spectator_. His only schooling had been that which he had gained at a very primitive log schoolhouse, where an old man named Hobby, originally a bondsman, taught the children of the plantations reading, writing, and arithmetic. George, however, was not the boy to be content with such a simple education, and he had made up his mind that if he could not go to William and Mary College he would at least learn all he could from Lord Fairfax's well-stocked library.

Young Washington's work as a surveyor was shortly cut in upon by the outbreak of trouble with France. In looking over the youths of the neighborhood who were likely to make good soldiers, attention was almost at once attracted to him. Everybody knew he had a great sense of responsibility, and his feats as an athlete were equally well known.

As a small boy he had been unusually big and strong for his age, and had always delighted in any kind of contest of strength. He could outrun, outride and outbox any boy of either side the Potomac, and had proved it in many contests of skill. When he was at Hobby's school he had liked to form his mates into companies at recess time, with cane stalks for rifles and dried gourds for drums, and drill them in the manual of arms. They had fought mimic battles, and Washington always commanded one side. He had really learned a good deal of the art of war in this way, and so when men were casting about for likely young officers they naturally thought of the boy surveyor.

His brother Lawrence had sufficient influence to procure him an appointment as District Adjutant General, and had him make his headquarters at Mount Vernon, where he immediately began to drill the raw recruits of the countryside. But in the midst of these military operations Lawrence fell ill and had to make a sea voyage to the West Indies, taking his young brother George with him as company.

In the West Indies George caught smallpox, but he made a quick recovery and after a short convalescence began to enjoy the tropical life which was so entirely new to him.

Unfortunately Lawrence Washington did not grow stronger, and finally came back to Mount Vernon to die under his own roof. He was very young, very high-spirited and accomplished, and immensely popular with all Virginians. George had looked up to him as to a second father, and his loss was a tremendous blow to him. Lawrence for his part must have realized the very unusual qualities of character in his young half-brother. He left his great estate of Mount Vernon together with other property to his wife and daughter, and in case they should die then to his mother and his brother George. George was asked to take charge of the estates, and although he was still only a boy in years he showed such splendid ability and judgment in business matters that the whole care of the family interests soon fell upon his shoulders.

We have already seen how deeply this boy impressed older men with his rare judgment, and it is scarcely strange to find that he was soon after picked out by the governor of Virginia to command an expedition sent through the wilderness to treat with the Indians and French. This required physical strength and firm purpose, the courage to deal with the Indians and shrewdness to treat with the French. Washington was known to have all these qualities. His youth was the only thing against him, and that the governor was glad to overlook.

It was a rough and perilous expedition, made partly in frail canoes down the great rivers, and partly by fighting a way through the unbroken woods. Washington met the Indians whom the French had tried hard to win over to their side, and by the most skilful diplomacy induced the chiefs to send back the wampums which the French had given them as tokens of alliance. He had studied the Indian character and knew the twists and turns of their peculiar type of mind. He was frank and outspoken with them, and as a result won their confidence, so that for a great part of his journey chiefs of the Delawares, the Shawnees and other tribes traveled with him.

Besides his success with the red men, George Washington, with his surveyor's knowledge, made a careful study of the country through which he passed, the result of which study was of the greatest value in later years when he commanded an army in that region.

He picked out the place where the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers meet as an admirable site for a fort and made a report of its advantages from a military point of view. Only a year or two later French engineers proved the correctness of his judgment by settling on the spot as the site of Fort Du Quesne, which is now Pittsburg.

Successful as he had been with the Indians, Washington was scarcely less successful with the civilized French commander. This man, like those at Belvoir, recognized at once the self-command, the extreme intelligence, and the modesty of the youth who appeared before him. The old officer and the young pioneer met as equals and fought diplomatically across the table as to which nation should win the alliance of the red men. The negotiations were extremely difficult, enough to try the skill of a man grown old in diplomatic service, but Washington completed his mission successfully, and at last set out to retrace his steps home.

Now they had much more difficulty with the Indians and with the elements. Some of their guides turned traitors, and they had to watch their arms by night and day. Ceaseless vigilance had to be used, and time and again the little band had to make forced marches and change their course on the spur of the moment to throw off bands of pursuing savages. When they reached the banks of the Alleghany River they found that it was only partly frozen over and that great quantities of broken ice were driving down the channel in the middle.

Washington knew that a band of hostile Indians was at his heels, and he had to plan some way of crossing the Alleghany. He decided to build a raft, but had only one poor hatchet with which to construct it. The men set to work with this, and labored all day, but night came before the raft was finished. As soon as they could they launched it and tried to steer it across with long poles. When they reached the main channel the raft became jammed between great cakes of ice, and it seemed as if they would all be swept down-stream with it. Washington planted his pole against the bottom of the stream and pushed with all his might, in hopes of holding the raft still until the ice should have gone by. Instead the current drove the ice against his pole with such force that he was jerked into the water and only saved himself from being swept down the roaring channel by seizing one of the logs.

They found it impossible to reach shore. The best they could do was to get to an island near which the raft had drifted. Here they passed the night, exposed to extreme cold, in great danger of freezing; but in the morning the drift ice was found so tightly wedged together that they were able to cross over on it to the opposite bank of the Alleghany.

This was but one of many adventures that befell the little party on its homeward way. Through all kinds of dangers Washington led his men, and finally he had the satisfaction of bringing the expedition safely back to Williamsburg, where he gave the governor a full report of his remarkable mission. It was practically the first expedition of its kind in Virginian history, and the story of it soon spread far and wide through the Old Dominion.

Everywhere men spoke of the remarkable skill the young man had shown in dealing with fickle Indians and crafty French. Report was made of the trained eye with which the young commander had noticed the military qualities of the country and of the courage he had shown in all sorts of perils. More than that, the governor of Virginia and other men in power realized that Washington had prudence, good judgment, and resolution to a remarkable degree, and told each other that here was a man worthy to uphold the interests of the colony. From the date of this trip George Washington became a prominent figure. It was not long before he was to be the mainstay of Virginia.

Every one knows the story of Washington's life. From being the mainstay of Virginia and fighting with General Braddock against the French and Indians, he became the mainstay of the United Colonies and fought through seven long and trying years against the veterans of England. Who can overestimate the great patience and courage and determination that heroic struggle required of him?

We see him taking command of the raw recruits at Cambridge, leading his men in victory at Trenton, sustaining them in defeat at Monmouth, cheering them through the desperate winter at Valley Forge. Later we see him as first President of the United States guiding the new republic through its first troubled years, and later still as the simple gentleman of Mount Vernon, glad to escape to the peace of the river and fields he loved.

There are few figures in history quite so self-reliant as that of this "Father of his Country." The qualities which made him so remarkable a boy were the same as those which made him so great a man.

VII

Daniel Boone

The Boy of the Frontier: 1735-1820

Many people were riding to the big red barn that belonged to a Pennsylvania farmer who lived on the outskirts of the little town of Oley in Berks County. It was a Sunday morning early in the summer of 1742, and people from all the neighborhood were heading for that barn. Almost all of them came on horseback, sometimes man and wife riding separate steeds, sometimes the woman seated behind the man, her hands grasping his coat. A few families, father, mother and a flock of children, covered the road on foot, the father with a gun usually strapped across his back. A very few people drove up in primitive carriages, something like old-fashioned English chaises. Those who drove were very proud, because such elegant carriages were rarely seen outside of Philadelphia, and betokened much social prominence.

The big doors of the red barn stood wide open, and as soon as the horses were properly tethered the country people streamed inside. Most primitive benches had been placed in rows facing a broad platform at the farther end, and men, women and children filed into the seats with all the solemnity of people entering church. As soon as they had settled themselves on the benches they all stared at the platform.

Five swarthy, red-skinned Indians stood on the raised place, and a little in front of them stood a tall, strong-featured white man. The Indians wore their native buckskin clothes, and had chains of bright beads about their necks, but their faces were as quiet and peaceful as that of the white man in front of them. One of them, he who looked the youngest, wore a single brilliant red feather in his long black hair. All the men stood there patiently until the barn was filled.

Down in front, close to the platform, sat a small boy, his eyes fixed on the young Indian who wore the scarlet feather. The boy was about eight years old. His hair was dark and rather long, his blue eyes looked from under light yellowish eyebrows, his mouth was very wide but his lips were thin and straight. He looked alert and interested.

Presently the white man on the platform, who was a widely-known Moravian missionary named Count Zinzendorf, raised his voice in prayer. The farmers, their wives, and children knelt on the floor of the barn. When the prayer was ended the Count stated that at this meeting, or synod, as he called it, they were to hear from five Delaware Indians, lately converted to Christianity. One after the other the red men stepped forward and spoke, slowly, and sometimes hesitating over long English words, but with a fine earnestness that was accented by their strong, dignified bearing and their firm, well-cut features.

The boy in front listened attentively, although he could not understand everything they said. He liked Indians, and, as long as he had to go to church, he was glad he could look at these Delawares.

The synod came to an end, and the congregation filed slowly out of the barn. Those who had ridden mounted again, and went their homeward way at the slow and decorous pace suitable to Sunday. Squire Boone, who had been sitting on the front bench with his wife Sarah, and nine of his eleven children, gathered the latter together, and guided them, much like a flock of sheep, to his log cabin home near Oley. One of them, the fourth boy, Daniel by name, had lingered behind. He had waited until the five Delawares were leaving, and then had gone up to the youngest of the Indians, and touched his hand.

The Indian looked down at the small boy, and smiled. "How?" he said encouragingly.

"Is the feather in your hair a flamingo feather?" asked the boy.

The Delaware nodded. "Yes, him flamingo."

"How did you win it?"

The young man smiled again. "Once the Delawares must have rescue from the Hurons. A chief sent me with others to take word. We must go through Iroquois country to get Hurons. Iroquois bad people, war with us. Other Delawares killed, I take word in safe. Hurons go back with me, and help my people. Chief give me flamingo feather."

Admiration shone in the boy's eyes. "I like the Delawares," said he.

"Delawares like you people," replied the Indian. "What you name?"

"Daniel Boone. Some day, when I grow up, I'll come and visit you."

"Good," said the other. He held out his hand as he was used to seeing white men do. The boy put his palm in the Indian's, and they shook hands. Then Daniel turned and scampered down the road after his father.

The boys of the Boone family had a very good time. They lived on what was then the frontier between civilization and the wilderness. They learned to hunt and fish, and to know the habits of the animals of the woods and fields. Moreover they were almost as used to seeing Indians as to seeing white people, and had none of the fear of them which kept so many of the settlers farther east continually uneasy.

The boys and girls had plenty of work to do. Squire Boone had a big farm, and kept five or six looms working in his house, making homespun clothes for his large family and to sell to his neighbors. He owned a splendid grazing range some little distance north of his home, and sent his cattle there early each spring.

Shortly after that Sunday of Count Zinzendorf's missionary meeting Daniel's mother told him that he and she were to take the cattle north to this range, and watch them during the summer. Squire Boone was needed at the farm, the older girls were to tend the loom, and the mother had chosen her favorite son to go north with her.

At the beginning of summer they drove the cows to the range, and stayed there with them until autumn. Mrs. Boone and Daniel lived in a small cabin, far from any neighbors. Near the cabin, over a spring, was a dairy-house. The sturdy woman worked here, making fine butter and cheese, while Daniel kept guard over the cattle, letting them wander over the hills and through the woods as they would, but driving them back to their pen near the cabin at sunset.

This duty of herdsman left Daniel much time to himself. He spent this time in studying woodcraft. He grew passionately fond of everything belonging to the wilderness; he knew birds and beasts, the trails through the forest and the course of streams as well as any Indian. He set traps of his own making, and brought his captures proudly home at night to his mother.

At first he had to make his own weapons, and invented a curious implement, simply a slim, smooth-shaved sapling, with a bunch of twisted roots at the end. This he learned to throw so skilfully that he could readily kill birds, rabbits, and small game with it. A little later, however, his father gave him a rifle, and he became an expert marksman, able to provide his mother with plenty of game for food.

It was a wonderful life for a boy who loved the country. All summer he herded the cattle and roamed through the almost untrodden wilderness. In the winter his father let him hunt as soon as he had learned to handle a gun. Daniel roamed far and wide across the Neversink mountain range to the north and west of Monocacy Valley. He kept his family supplied with great stock of game, and he cured the animals' skins. When he had a sufficient store of skins he set out to market them in Philadelphia.

The city William Penn had founded on the banks of the Delaware was then a small but prosperous village. It had been designed on the plan of a checker-board, and most of the houses were surrounded by well-kept gardens and flourishing orchards. Primitive as it was, the country boy looked at it with wondering admiration. The houses, which were really very simple, were palaces to him, when he thought of his father's log cabin. The men and women, dressed in the latest importations brought from London by sailing vessels, were figures of surpassing style and elegance.

Life in Philadelphia seemed very rich to Daniel Boone; he liked to loiter along the streets and look in at the wide gardens and the comfortable white porches, and he liked to stop and watch a city chaise drive by, with a man in a claret or plum-colored suit and a woman in a bright taffeta gown. They were almost a different race from the buckskin-clad people of the wilderness from whom he came.

Yet the frontier was in fact very near to Philadelphia. A few outlying fields about the town alone separated it from the wild forest; guards were ever ready to give warning of danger from Indians on the war-path, and friendly Indians were constantly met with on the streets. There were many fur-traders, too, who brought their goods to market as Daniel did, and one was constantly meeting some rough-clad trapper in from the wilds for a few days of city life.

Daniel wandered about slowly, enjoying everything he saw with a boy's delight in the unusual, and finally exchanging the skins he had brought with him for things he needed in his hunting,--long, sharp-edged knives, flints, powder and lead for his gun.

When Daniel was fourteen his older brother married a young Quakeress who had received a better education than any of her neighbors. She liked Daniel and began to teach him to read and to figure. He was not a brilliant scholar, but he learned enough to do rough surveying work, and to write letters which expressed what he meant although spelled on a plan of his own. At about the same time Squire Boone started a blacksmith shop, and Daniel added this work to what he already did as herdsman and hunter. The work in iron gave him a chance to plan and carry out new ideas of his in regard to guns and traps.

The Pennsylvania country was gradually filling up, and in 1750, when Daniel was fifteen, Squire Boone began to wonder where his eleven children would find farming land. Directly westward rose the Alleghany Mountains, a high barrier to pioneers, and report said that the Indians who lived just beyond them were particularly fierce. Southwest, however, lay alluring valleys, broad meadows between the Appalachian ranges that stretched from Pennsylvania through Virginia and the Carolinas into far-off Georgia. Men who wanted new and bigger lands went south into the Blue Ridge country, and some near neighbors of the Boones had pushed on to the Yadkin Valley which lay in northwestern North Carolina. Reports came back of the splendid lands they found there.

Squire Boone was by nature a pioneer, a man who loved to explore new lands and build new settlements, and so he decided to venture into this new and promising country. There is a world of romance in such a journey as this the Boones now undertook, and they were but one of many thousand families who were pushing west and south, laying the foundations of a great land.

Mrs. Boone and the younger children were safely stowed away in canvas-covered wagons, such as were later known as "prairie schooners," and Squire Boone with Daniel and the older boys rode horseback, driving the cattle before them, and forming an armed guard about the caravan. They crossed the ford at Harper's Ferry and went on up the rich Shenandoah Valley. At night camp was pitched by a spring and the wagons drawn up in a circle about the cattle. A camp-fire was built and the game which Daniel as huntsman had shot was cooked for supper. Sentries were posted, and all night long father and sons took turns guarding against attack from Indians.

Think what a prospect lay before the pioneers! A vast tract of the fairest and richest land in the world waiting to be claimed from the wilderness. They had only to choose and take. But the zeal for exploration led them on, over the table-land of western Virginia, through the primeval forests, up the currents of the many rivers that flow toward the Ohio, and so on to the south and west.

As they neared the Yadkin they came to a splendid stretch of land; a high prairie, with fine grass for cattle, and near at hand streams edged with cane-brake. Daniel saw such fish and game as he had never seen before, fruit to be had for the taking, and a cattle range only bounded by the distant western mountains. But as he rode into the splendid prairie he thought more of those distant blue-topped heights than of the near-by meadows; he knew that on and on westward lay a great unknown country and already he felt it call to him to be explored.

Squire Boone chose land at a place called Buffalo Lick near the Yadkin River, and built a home there. Daniel now spent little time about the farm, for he had learned the value of skins in the Atlantic cities. Buffalo were plentiful all about the settlement, and he could kill four or five deer in a day. It was in truth a hunter's paradise. In a single day he could kill enough bears to make a ton of what was called bear-bacon; there were numberless wolves, panthers, and wildcats; turkeys, beavers, otters and smaller animals ran wild all about him, and from morn till night he was out hunting in the woods.

But life was not all sport for the young Boones. Various Indian tribes, the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and the Shawnese hunted not far away, and although they were often on friendly terms with the whites, and came to the settlement to trade, sometimes they put on their war paint, and descended on the small frontier homes with full fury.

As the French came down from the north disputing this new land with the English settlers they made the Indians their allies, and the border warfare grew more bitter. Finally the English general Braddock decided to march west himself and try to teach the French and Indians a lesson.

It was not likely that such a sturdy youth as Daniel Boone could resist the desire to march against the French. The expedition promised him a chance to push farther into that wild western country, if nothing else, and so he joined Braddock's small army with about a hundred other North Carolina frontiersmen. Daniel was made chief wagoner and blacksmith.

General Braddock knew nothing of Indian warfare, and the little expedition proved an easy target for their enemies. The cumbersome and heavily laden baggage wagons were a great handicap to them. The English regulars, the frontiersmen, and the baggage train were caught in the deep ravine of Turtle Creek, a few miles away from Pittsburg, and suddenly set upon by ambushed Indians commanded by French officers. Many of the drivers, caught in the trap, were killed. Daniel, however, contrived to cut the traces of his team, and mounting one of the horses, escaped down and out of the ravine under a fire of shot and arrows.

The Indians pursued the fugitives, laying waste the borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia, but not following as far south as the Yadkin. Daniel reached home, and set to work to strengthen the settlement's ties of friendship with the two tribes of the neighborhood, the Catawbas and the Cherokees. With their aid he was able to provide sufficient safeguard against the Northern tribes.

While he was with Braddock's army Daniel had met a man named John Finley, who fired his imagination with stories of his wanderings in the west. He was a fur-trader, and his passion for hunting had already led him into the Kentucky wilderness as far as the Falls of the Ohio River, where Louisville now stands. He had had countless adventures with Indians, with wild animals, and with the perils of stream and forest. Young Boone drank in the stories eagerly, and resolved that some day he would himself go out to explore the west.

Daniel had now come to manhood. For a time he stayed in the Yadkin Valley, but the call to follow the trail of the buffaloes and the westward moving Shawnese was clear in his ears. Dangerous days of Indian fighting on the border held him close at home, but the time came when he could resist the call no longer. He left home and took his way through the uncharted hills and forests to Kentucky.

At times he fought for his life with roving Indians, and at times he captained some small English garrison beset by the same red men. He won great renown as an Indian fighter, as a hunter, as an intrepid explorer. The little town of Boonesborough was named for him, and he defended it through a long and perilous siege. But so soon as men came and built homes and staked out farms Boone must be moving west. What he sought was the wilderness; he was happiest in the great recesses of the woods, or blazing his own trail across untrodden prairies.

He led the vanguard into North Carolina, into West Virginia, into Kentucky, and then into Missouri. He is a splendid example of the man who must go first to prepare the way for others, in every way the best type of those brave, hardy pioneers who were claiming the continent for English-speaking people. The things he had most desired as a boy he most desired in manhood, the rough life of a new country and the struggle to overcome the perils of the wild.

VIII

John Paul Jones

The Boy of the Atlantic: 1747-1792

The summer afternoon was fair, and the waves that rolled upon the north shore of Solway Firth in the western Lowlands of Scotland were calm and even. But the tide was coming in, and inch by inch was covering the causeway that led from shore to a high rock some hundred yards away. The rock was bare of vegetation, and sheer on the landward side, but on the face toward the sea were rough jutting points that would give a climber certain footholds, and near the top smooth ledges.

On one or two of these ledges sea-gulls had built their nests, tucked in under projecting points where they would be sheltered from wind and rain. Now the gulls would sweep in from sea, curving in great circles until they reached their homes, and then would sit on the ledge calling to their mates across the water. Except for the cries of the gulls, however, the rock was very quiet. The lazy regular beat of the waves about its base was very soothing. On the longest ledge, below the sea-gulls' nests, lay a boy about twelve years old, sound asleep, his face turned toward the ocean.

Either the gulls' cries or the sun, now slanting in the west, disturbed him. He did not open his eyes, but he clenched his fists, and muttered incoherently. Presently with a start he awoke. He rubbed his eyes, and then sat up. "What a queer dream!" he said aloud.

The ledge where he sat was not a very safe place. There was scarcely room for him to move, and directly below him was the sea. But this boy was quite as much at home on high rocks or in the water as he was on land, and he was very fond of looking out for distant sailing vessels and wondering where they might be bound.

He glanced along the north shore to the little fishing hamlet of Arbigland where he lived. He saw that the tide had come in rapidly while he slept, and that the path to the shore was now covered. He stood up and stretched his bare arms, brown with sunburn, high over his head. Then he started to climb down from the ledge by the jutting points of rock.

He was as sure-footed as any mountaineer. His clothes were old, so neither rock nor sea could do them much harm; his feet were bare. He was short but very broad, and his muscles were strong and supple. When he came to the foot of the rock he stood a moment, hunting for the deepest pool at its base, then, loosing his hold, he dove into the water.

In a few seconds he was up again, floating on his back; and a little later he struck out, swimming hand over hand, toward a sandy beach to the south.

A young man, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant in the British navy, stood on the beach, watching the boy swim. When the latter had landed and shaken the water from him much as a dog would, the man approached him. "Where on earth did you come from, John Paul?" he asked with a laugh. "The first thing I knew I saw you swimming in from sea."

"I was out on the rock asleep," said the boy. "The tide came up and cut me off. And oh, Lieutenant Pearson, I had the strangest dream! I dreamt I was in the middle of a great sea-fight. I was captain of a ship, and her yard-arms were on fire, and we were pouring broadsides into the enemy, afraid any minute that we'd sink. How we did fight that ship!"

The young officer's eyes glowed. "And I hope you may some day, John!" he exclaimed.

"But the strangest part was that our ship didn't fly the English flag," said the boy. "At the masthead was a flag I'd never seen, red and white with a blue field filled with stars in the corner. What country's flag is that?"

Pearson thought for a moment. "There's no such flag," he said finally. "I know them all, and there's none like that. The rest of your dream may come true, but not that about the flag. Come, let's be walking back to Arbigland."

Although John Paul's father came of peaceful farmer and fisher folk who lived about Solway Firth, his mother had been a "Highland lassie," descended from one of the fighting clans in the Grampian Hills. The boy had much of the Highlander's love of wild adventure, and found it hard to live the simple life of the fishing village. The sea appealed to him, and he much preferred it to the small Scotch parish school. His family were poor, and as soon as he was able he was set to steering fishing yawls and hauling lines. At twelve he was as sturdy and capable as most boys at twenty.

Many men in Arbigland had heard John Paul beg his father to let him cross the Solway to the port of Whitehaven and ship on some vessel bound for America, where his older brother William had found a new home. But his father saw no opening for his younger son in such a life. All the way back to town that afternoon the boy told Lieutenant Pearson of his great desire, and the young officer said he would try to help him.

The boy's chance, however, came in another way. A few days later it chanced that Mr. James Younger, a big ship-owner, was on the landing-place of Arbigland when some of the villagers caught sight of a small fishing yawl beating up against a stiff northeast squall, trying to gain the shelter of the little tidal-creek that formed the harbor of the town.

Mr. Younger looked long at the boat and then shook his head. "I don't think she'll do it," he said dubiously.

Yet the boat came on, and he could soon see that the only crew were a man and a boy. The boy was steering, handling the sheets and giving orders, while the man simply sat on the gunwale to trim the boat.

"Who's the boy?" asked the ship-owner.

"John Paul," said a bystander. "That's his father there."

Mr. Younger looked at the man pointed out, who was standing near, and who did not seem to be in the least alarmed. "Are you the lad's father?" he asked.

The man looked up and nodded. "Yes, that's my boy John conning the boat," said he. "He'll fetch her in. This isn't much of a squall for him!"

The father spoke with truth. The boy handled his small craft with such skill that he soon had her alongside the wharf. As soon as John Paul had landed Mr. Younger stepped up to the father and asked to be introduced to the son. Then the ship-owner told him how much he had admired his seamanship, and asked if he would care to sail as master's apprentice in a new vessel he owned, which was fitting out for a voyage to Virginia and the West Indies. The boy's eyes danced with delight; he begged his father to let him go, and finally Mr. Paul consented. The twelve-year-old boy had won his wish to go to sea.

A few days later the brig _Friendship_ sailed from Whitehaven, with small John Paul on board, and after a slow voyage which lasted thirty-two days dropped anchor in the Rappahannock River of Virginia.

The life of a colonial trader was very pleasant in 1760. The sailing-vessels usually made a triangular voyage, taking some six months to go from England to the colonies, then to the West Indies, and so east again. About three of the six months were spent at the small settlements on shore, discharging goods from England, taking on board cotton and tobacco, and bartering with the merchants.

The Virginians, who lived on their great plantations with many servants, were the most hospitable people in the world, always eager to entertain a stranger, and the English sailors were given the freedom of the shore. The _Friendship_ anchored a short distance down the river from where John Paul's older brother lived, and the boy immediately went to see him and stayed as his guest for some time.

This brother William had been adopted by a wealthy planter named Jones, and the latter was delighted with the young John Paul, and tried to get him to leave the sailor's life and settle on the Rappahannock. But much as John liked the easy life of the plantation, the fine riding horses, the wide fields and splendid rivers, the call of the sea was dearer to him, and when the _Friendship_ dropped down the Rappahannock bound for Tobago and the Barbadoes he was on board of her.

Those were adventurous days for sailors and merchants. Money was to be made in many ways, and consciences were not overcareful as to the ways. The prosperous traders of Virginia did not mind taking an interest in some ocean rover bound on pirate's business, or in the more lawful slave-trade with the west coast of Africa. For a time, however, young John Paul sailed for Mr. Younger, and was finally paid by being given a one-sixth interest in a ship called _King George's Packet_.

The boy was now first mate, and trade with England being dull, he and the captain decided to try the slave-trade. For two years they made prosperous voyages between Jamaica and the coast of Guinea, helping to found the fortunes of some of the best known families of America by importing slaves.

After a year, however, John Paul tired of the business, and sold his share of the ship to the captain for about one thousand guineas. He was not yet twenty-one, but his seafaring life had already made him fairly well-to-do. He planned to go home and see his family in Scotland, and took passage in the brig _John o' Gaunt_.

Life on shipboard was full of perils then, and very soon after the brig had cleared the Windward Islands the terrible scourge of yellow fever was found to be on the vessel. Within a few days the captain, the mate, and all of the crew but five had died of the disease. John Paul was fully exposed to it, but he and the five men escaped it. He was the only one of those left who knew anything about navigation, so he took command, and after a stormy passage, with a crew much too small to handle the brig, he managed to bring her safely to Whitehaven with all her cargo. He handled her as skilfully as he had the small yawl in Solway Firth.

The owners of the _John o' Gaunt_ were delighted and gave John Paul and his five sailors the ten per cent. share of the cargo which the salvage laws entitled them to. In addition they offered him the command of a splendid full-rigged new merchantman which was to sail between England and America, and a tenth share of all profits. It was a very fine offer to a man who had barely come of age, but the youth had shown that he had few equals as a mariner.

Good fortune shone upon him. He had no sooner sailed up the Rappahannock again and landed at the plantation where his brother lived than he learned that the rich old Virginian, William Jones, had recently died and in his will had named him as one of his heirs. He had always cherished a fancy for the sturdy, black-haired boy who had made him that visit. The will provided that John Paul should add the planter's name to his own. The young captain did not object to this, and so henceforth he was known as John Paul Jones.

Scores of stories are told of the young captain's adventures. He loved danger, and it was his nature to enjoy a fight with men or with the elements. On a voyage to Jamaica he met with serious trouble. Fever again reduced the crew to six men, and Jones was the only officer able to be on deck. A huge negro named Maxwell tried to start a mutiny and capture the ship for his own uses. He rushed at Jones, and the latter had to seize a belaying-pin and hit him over the head. The man fell badly hurt and soon after reaching Jamaica died.

Jones gave himself up to the authorities and was tried for murder on the high seas. He said to the court: "I had two brace of loaded pistols in my belt, and could easily have shot him. I struck with a belaying-pin in preference, because I hoped that I might subdue him without killing him." He was acquitted, and soon after offered command of a new ship built to trade with India.

The charm of life in Virginia appealed more and more strongly to the sailor. He liked the new country, the society of the young cities along the Atlantic coast, and he spent less time on the high seas and more time fishing and hunting on his own land and in Chesapeake Bay. He might have settled quietly into such prosperous retirement had not the minutemen of Concord startled the new world into stirring action.

John Paul Jones loved America and he loved ships. Consequently he was one of the very first to offer his services in building a new navy. Congress was glad to have him; he was known as a man of the greatest courage and of supreme nautical skill.

On September 23, 1779, Paul Jones, on board the American ship _Bon Homme Richard_, met the British frigate _Serapis_ off the English coast. A battle of giants followed, for both ships were manned by brave crews and commanded by extraordinarily skilful officers. The short, black-haired, agile American commander saw his ship catch fire, stood on his quarterdeck while the blazing spars, sails and rigging fell about him, while his men were mowed down by the terrific broadsides of the _Serapis_, and calmly directed the fire of shot at the enemy.

Terribly as the _Bon Homme Richard_ suffered, the _Serapis_ was in still worse plight. Two-thirds of her men were killed or wounded when Paul Jones gave the signal to board her. The Americans swarmed over the enemy's bulwarks, and, armed with pistol and cutlass, cleared the deck.

The captain of the _Serapis_ fought his ship to the last, but when he saw the Americans sweeping everything before them and already heading for the quarterdeck, he himself seized the ensign halyards and struck his flag. Both ships were in flames, and the smoke was so thick that it was some minutes before men realized his surrender. There was little to choose between the two vessels; each was a floating mass of wreckage.

A little later the English captain went on board the _Bon Homme Richard_ and tendered his sword to the young American. The latter looked hard at the English officer. "Captain Pearson?" he asked questioningly.

The other bowed.

"Ah, I thought so. I am John Paul Jones, once small John Paul of Arbigland in the Firth. Do you remember me?"

Pearson looked at the smoke-grimed face, the keen black eyes, the fine figure. "I shouldn't have known you. Yes, I remember now."

Paul Jones took the sword that was held out to him, and asked one of his midshipmen to escort the British captain to his cabin. He could not help smiling as a curious recollection came to him. He looked up at the masthead above him. There floated a flag bearing thirteen red and white stripes and a blue corner filled with stars. It was the very flag of his dream as a boy.

Thus it was that the sturdy Scotch boy, full of the daring spirit of his Highland ancestors, became the great sea-fighter of a new country, and ultimately wrote his name in history as the Father of the American Navy.

IX

Mozart

The Boy of Salzburg: 1756-1791

The great hall of the famous musical society of Bologna in Italy was filled with musicians on the afternoon of October 9, 1770. They had gathered to welcome a small boy who had recently come with his father from the town of Salzburg in Austria. The most marvelous stories of his genius as a composer had preceded him, and his travels through Europe had been one long success. Yet it scarcely seemed possible that a boy of fourteen could know so much about music as this one was said to. That was why the learned men of Bologna had gathered together this afternoon. They were going to test Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's skill.