It was of utmost fortune for his country that this youth went into the West in his teens, for he was to be, under Providence, a champion of that West worthy of its influence on human affairs. Thus he had come to it early and loved it; he learned to know its value, to foresee something of its future, to think for and with its pioneer developers, to study its roads and rivers and portages: thus he was fortified against narrow purposes, and made as broad in his sympathies and ambitions as the great West was broad itself. No statesman of his day came to know and believe in the West as Washington did; and it is not difficult to think that had he not so known and loved it, the territory west of the Allegheny mountains would never have become a portion of the United States of America. There were far too many serious men like Thomas Jefferson who knew little about the West and boasted that they cared less. Yet today the seaboard states are more dependent commercially and politically on the states between the Alleghenies and Mississippi than are these central commonwealths dependent on them. The same divine Providence which directed this youth’s steps into the Alleghenies had brought him speedily to his next post of duty, for family influence secured him an appointment as adjutant-general (with rank of major) over one of the four military districts into which Virginia had been divided for purposes of defense, a position for which he was as fitted by inclination as by frontier experience. This lad now received Dinwiddie’s appointment. As a practical surveyor in the wilderness he possessed the frontiersman’s qualifications; as an apt and diligent student of military science, with a brother--trained under Admiral Vernon--as a practical tutor, he had in a degree a soldier’s qualifications; if not a diplomat, he was as shrewd a lad as chivalrous old Virginia had within her borders; still, at twenty-one, that boy of the sixty maxims, but hardened, steadied and made exceeding thoughtful by his life on Virginia’s great black forest-bound horizon. His keen eyes, quick perception and daring spirit were now to be turned to something of more moment than a tripod’s reading or a shabby line of Virginia militia. All in all, he was far better fitted for this mission than anyone could have known or guessed.