To survey meant to command. Watched by red men over the hills, dogged by savages in the brakes, scalped by demons in the wood, the frontier surveyor must be ready at any instant to drop chain and compass for the rifle and the knife.
Like Wayne and Washington, Clark had drilled boy troops when he and Madison were pupils together under the old Scotch dominie, Donald Robertson, in Albemarle.
While still in his teens George and a few others, resolute young men, crossed the Alleghanies, went over Braddock's route, and examined Fort Necessity where Washington had been. They floated down the Monongahela to Fort Pitt. In the angle of the rivers, overlooking the flood, mouldered the remains of old Fort Du Quesne, blown up by the French when captured by the English. The mound, the moat, the angles and bastions yet remained, but overgrown with grass, and cattle grazed where once an attempt had been made to plant mediæval institutions on the sod of North America. As if born for battles, Clark studied the ground plans.
"Two log gates swung on hinges here," explained the Colonel from Fort Pitt, "one opening on the water and one on the land side with a mediæval drawbridge. Every night they hauled up the ponderous bridge, leaving only a dim dark pit down deep to the water."
With comprehensive glance George Rogers Clark took in the mechanism of intrenchments, noted the convenient interior, with magazine, bake-house, and well in the middle.
"So shall I build my forts." Pencil in hand the young surveyor had the whole scheme instantly sketched. The surprised Colonel took a second look. Seldom before had he met so intelligent a study of fortifications.
"Are you an officer?"
"I am Major of Virginia militia under Lord Dunmore."
With a missionary to the Indians, Clark slid down the wild Ohio and took up a claim beyond the farthest. Here for a year he lived as did Boone, beating his corn on a hominy block and drying his venison before his solitary evening fire. Then he journeyed over into the Scioto.
So, when the Dunmore war broke out, here was a scout ready at hand for the Governor. Major Clark knew every inch of the Braddock route and every trail to the Shawnee towns. When a fort was needed, it was the skilled hand and fertile brain of George Rogers Clark that planned the bastioned stockade that became the nucleus of the future city of Wheeling.