mightily pleased with George's signal success, arranged to have the boy appointed the official surveyor of Culpeper County, which was a part of his own inheritance, and so named in honor of his mother. But George's appointment was not a mere matter of influence, for he had to pass a rigid examination at William and Mary College, at Williamsburg, the Colonial capital, before receiving, when but seventeen, the following license, which he had a good right to look upon as a kind of ticket of admission from boyhood to young manhood: "George Washington, Gent., produced a commission from the President and Master of William and Mary College, appointing him to be a Surveyor of this County, which was read, and thereupon he took the usual oaths to his Majesty's person and government, and took and subscribed to the abjuration oath and text, and took the oath of a surveyor according to law." 8-Washington. CHAPTER VIII YOUNG MAJOR WASHINGTON THE ONLY TIME GEORGE EVER LEFT HIS NATIVE LAND THE life of the seventeen-year-old County Surveyor went on as before. His pilgrimages into the wilderness were made at wider intervals, for his brother needed him more. Lawrence's failing health made it necessary for George to assume a general oversight of the great estate and its many interests, milling, fishing and manufacturing, besides the work on an ordinary farm or plantation. His brother had been pleased with Lord Fairfax's attentions and was proud of George's success in surveying. More than that, the lad had shown that, while his family would gladly have made life easy and pleasant for him, he was determined to make his own way in the world. A boy may inherit property or have a fortune given to him, but he has to earn success. This is what George had shown a disposition to do, and no boy of seventeen, even of greater ability, ever achieved higher success than the Widow Washington's oldest son. It is too often asserted that Washington's way. was opened for him through life, but this was not true. He had to work hard and long to win his great success. George, on his part, was beginning to see the motive of Lawrence's keeping him at Mount Vernon, and that the eldest brother's opposition to his surveying was not merely because it was not thought respectable. He saw that Lawrence's health was going from bad to worse, and he and Anne, the sick man's wife, persuaded him to try the already famous warm springs of Virginia. Lawrence returned from the springs as weak and wan as he went, and the doctors advised him to take the ocean voyage to England. This did not benefit him. As a last resort he decided to spend the winter in Barbados. Between the journeys in his vain search for health Lawrence was planning for the future of his little family, which consisted of his wife, and infant daughter. He resigned as an officer in the Colonial militia and recom mended his younger brother for the vacancy. Though George was but nineteen, he was chosen district Adjustant-General, with the rank of major, and a salary amounting to seven hundred and fifty dollars a year. So, while he was continuing his broadsword practice with Van Braam and his military studies under Adjutant Muse, the young man had to make tours through several neighboring counties, inspecting drills, arms and accoutrements of the Colonial militia. These important excursions, in addition to his duties as manager at Mount Vernon, and his occasional expeditions into Culpeper County, as official surveyor, and farther over the Ridge, kept him very busy, indeed. All his military and other duties had to give way to the closer obligations of a brother's affection, for Lawrence wanted only George to go with him on the voyage to the West Indies. The Washington brothers sailed the 28th of September, 1751, for the little island of Barbados, the most easterly of the Lesser Antilles, which form the curved enclosure of the Carribbean Sea on the east. In these days of "ocean greyhounds" which cross the Atlantic in five days, or even less, it seems incredible that they were five weary weeks on their way to those outlying islands. George kept a record of this journey, the only one he ever made out of his own country. Even Barbados was not a foreign island, as it was then, as now, a British possession. That little green island, surrounded by coral reefs, must have looked beautiful to the tired voyagers as they drew near, almost in sight of the northern shore line of South America, and entered the harbor at Bridgetown, its one city and its capital, for the island itself is only twenty miles long and fourteen wide. The following passages are from George's journal, beginning with their reception by Major Clark, the governor of the island, and describing the hospitalities tendered them during their short stay there: Nov. 4, 1751. This morning received |