The services that engaged him were also of deep importance. If the present United States, west of the Alleghany Mountains of Western Pennsylvania had remained French territory, the country facing the Atlantic Ocean might have remained a colony of Great Britain instead of expanding into the United States. At best, the Atlantic coast would have been a small and weak nation. When France lost the interior to England then the American colonies broadened and gained strength of mind and means until they decided to shift for themselves.

CONTENTS

CHAPTERPAGE
[George Washington]15
I.[Robert the Hunter Makes Discoveries]21
II.[Alarm at Logstown]40
III.[The Mingos Send for Help]54
IV.[On the Trail to the West]72
V.[The Young Chief Arrives]88
VI.[By Order of the Governor]98
VII.[Robert Proves his Valor]105
VIII.[Washington Meets the French]114
IX.[Half-King Causes Trouble]124
X.[The Long Danger March]134
XI.[Facing Winter Peril]149
XII.[Robert Carries Bad News]162
XIII.[Battle and Victory]175
XIV.[Bright Lightning Lends a Hand]189
XV.[In and Out of Fort Necessity]198
XVI.[In and Out of Fort Duquesne]214
XVII.[Scouting for the Grenadiers]230
XVIII.[A Little Bear in a Tree]242
XIX.[In Fort Duquesne Again]253
XX.[The Battle in the Woods]262
XXI.[A Buckskin Corporal]277
XXII.[The Fall of the Great Fort]289
XXIII.[Colonel Washington Rests]296

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
[“My name is George Washington”]Frontispiece
[Washington at the age of twenty-five]15
[Wilderness trails of young George Washington]21
[Gist and John Davidson were the paddlers]134
[ Bright Lightning rode off astride]167
[Washington was here, there, everywhere]270

WASHINGTON AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-FIVE

GEORGE WASHINGTON

1732. Born about ten o’clock in the morning of February 22nd (by the calendar of those days, February 11th), upon the old Washington plantation of Wakefield bordering the Potomac River between Bridges’ and Pope’s Creek in Westmoreland County of the Colony of Virginia’s “Northern Neck”—the peninsula formed by the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. Father, Augustine Washington; mother, Mary Ball Washington, second wife. The Washington family was of good English stock dating back to the Thirteenth Century, and had a long roll of scholars and valiant soldiers. George Washington’s great-grandfather, John Washington, had settled here in Westmoreland County in 1657. When George was born he had two half-brothers, Lawrence and Augustine. He was followed by five brothers and sisters—Elizabeth, Samuel, John Augustine, Charles and Mildred.