The English governor of Virginia sent him, still little more than a boy, as messenger of the British government to the French and Indian commanders in the distant Ohio region. This was a lonely journey of many hundred miles through frozen and pathless forests full of cruel savages. George had several hairbreadth escapes, once from drowning in an icy river, and once from being shot by a treacherous Indian guide. A great writer says of his wonderful success on this difficult and dangerous errand through that western wilderness: “He went in a schoolboy, he came out the first soldier in the colonies.” The brave youth was appointed Major Washington, and given command of a little army to fight the French and Indians. He soon gained a victory which was called “the first blow” in a war which lasted, in America and Europe, more than fifty years. As a member of General Braddock’s staff young Washington saved the remaining part of the British army at Fort Duquesne. He was Colonel Washington when he was sent to the Congress which adopted the Declaration of Independence. While there he was made commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in the War for Independence. His faith and courage and patience endeared him so to the country that no other man could be thought of for the first President of the United States except the “Father of his Country.” ALEXANDER HAMILTON, THE ORPHAN BOY FROM THE WEST INDIES On the little island of Nevis, in the West Indies, lived a small boy who had lost his mother, a bright young woman from France. His father, James Hamilton, who was a Scotch planter, soon left the island, and the boy, Alexander, heard little of him after that. No one knows to-day what became of the father of Alexander Hamilton, but his grandfather was a Scottish laird, or lord. The next that is known of Alexander is that he was a clerk in the store of a merchant on Santa Cruz, a smaller island, and that the lad was not contented there. When he was twelve he wrote back to a friend in Nevis, “I would be willing to risk my life, but not my character, to exalt my station.” Alexander studied with a minister of Santa Cruz who did all he could to help the boy to improve his position in life. As Alexander was a devout lad it is believed that the good man was trying to fit him to be a minister. The first thing young Hamilton did to win credit was to write a wonderful description of a hurricane, or violent wind storm, that did great damage on the island. The article was printed in a London newspaper. When the people who knew the lad read his account, they could hardly believe that one so young could have written it and several wealthy planters decided to give such a bright boy a chance “to exalt his station” by sending him to school in America.