She was so fond of this son that when one of his half-brothers wanted him to serve in the British navy, she refused to let him go. As soon as Washington had finished school, he went to live with this brother at Mount Vernon, where he learned to know all the people around there, and, among others, Lord Fair´fax.
This nobleman owned great tracts of land in the valleys of the Alleghany Mountains, and as they had never been surveyed, he hired young George to do the work. This was a very hard task, and the seventeen-year-old Washington was often, for days at a time, far away from any settlement, forced to depend upon hunting for food, and obliged to sleep out in the open air.
The Virginia Natural Bridge.
These hardships, however, only made him strong and self-reliant, and when he came back to his home, from time to time, he doubly enjoyed the amusements of the young people, and danced gayly, a pastime of which he was always fond. It was probably during one of these surveying expeditions that Washington first visited the Natural Bridge in Virginia. Here he showed his athletic skill by tossing a coin on top of it when standing almost directly under it.
We are also told that he scaled the rocks, which were then free from any except nature's marks, and reaching a high point, carved his name in the stone. For years, Washington's name is said to have stood there on the rocks, as far above all the rest as is his worth compared with that of other men. But a young man once climbed up there to carve his name above Washington's, an act of presumption for which every one scorns him. He went up so far that he could not come down again, but had to climb higher and higher, and at last be drawn to the top with a rope.
LII. WASHINGTON'S JOURNEY.
By the time Washington was nineteen, he had shown himself so capable, honest, and thoroughly trustworthy that every one who knew him greatly respected him. His brother Lawrence having fallen ill of consumption, Washington went with him to Bar´ba-dos, where he had an attack of smallpox.
This journey, the only one Washington ever made outside the limits of our country, was so interesting to him that he kept a diary in which he made note of all he saw and heard. After a winter spent in the West Indies, Washington came home to get his sister-in-law; but before they could sail to join the invalid, they heard he was coming home to die.