Still he went calmly about his many affairs as usual, and gratified the old passion for the frontier by a journey to Pittsburgh for the sake of lands and soldiers' claims, and thence down the Ohio and into the wilderness with his old friends the trappers and pioneers. He visited the Indian villages as in the days of the French mission, and noted in the savages an ominous restlessness, which seemed, like the flight of birds, to express the dumb instinct of an approaching storm. The clouds broke away somewhat under the kindly management of Lord Botetourt, and then gathered again more thickly on the accession of his successor, Lord Dunmore. With both these gentlemen Washington was on the most friendly terms. He visited them often, and was consulted by them, as it behooved them to consult the strongest man within the limits of their government. Still he waited and watched, and scanned carefully the news from the North. Before long he heard that tea-chests were floating in Boston harbor, and then from across the water came intelligence of the passage of the Port Bill and other measures destined to crush to earth the little rebel town. When the Virginia assembly met again, they proceeded to congratulate the governor on the arrival of Lady Dunmore, and then suddenly, as all was flowing smoothly along, there came a letter through the corresponding committee which Washington had helped to establish, telling of the measures against Boston. Everything else was thrown aside at once, a vigorous protest was entered on the journal of the House, and June 1, when the Port Bill was to go into operation, was appointed a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. The first result was prompt dissolution of the assembly. The next was another meeting in the long room of the Raleigh tavern, where the Boston bill was denounced, non-importation renewed, and the committee of correspondence instructed to take steps for calling a general congress. Events were beginning to move at last with perilous rapidity. Washington dined with Lord Dunmore on the evening of that day, rode with him, and appeared at her ladyship's ball the next night, for it was not his way to bite his thumb at men from whom he differed politically, nor to call the motives of his opponents in question. But when the 1st of June arrived, he noted in his diary that he fasted all day and attended the appointed services. He always meant what he said, being of a simple nature, and when he fasted and prayed there was something ominously earnest about it, something that his excellency the governor, who liked the society of this agreeable man and wise counselor, would have done well to consider and draw conclusions from, and which he probably did not heed at all. He might well have reflected, as he undoubtedly failed to do, that when men of the George Washington type fast and pray on account of political misdoings, it is well for their opponents to look to it carefully.