“The crests of the mountains were still whitened with ice and snow. Chilling blasts swept the plains. The streams were swollen into torrents by the spring rains. The Indians, however, whose hunting parties ranged these forests, were at that time friendly. Still there were vagrant bands wandering here and there, ever ready to kill and plunder. * * * Though these wilds may be called pathless, still there were, here and there, narrow trails which the moccasined foot of the savage had trodden for uncounted centuries. They led, in a narrow track, scarcely two feet in breadth, through dense thickets, over craggy hills, and along the banks of placid streams or foaming torrents. * * * It was generally necessary to camp at night wherever darkness might overtake them. With their axes a rude cabin was easily constructed, roofed with bark, which afforded a comfortable shelter from wind and rain. The forest presented an ample supply of game. Delicious brook trout were easily taken from the streams. Exercise and fresh air gave appetite. With a roaring fire crackling before the camp, illumining the forest far and wide, the adventurers cooked their supper and ate it with a relish such as the pampered guests in lordly banqueting halls have seldom experienced. Their sleep was probably more sweet than was ever found on beds of down. Occasionally they would find shelter for the night in the wigwam of the friendly Indian.” In amusing contrast to this rose-colored view of life in the woods are the terse and evidently feeling words from the pen of Washington himself, recorded in his journal under date of March 15, 1748: “Worked hard till night and then returned. After supper we were lighted into a room, and I, not being so good a woodman as the rest, stripped myself very orderly and went into the bed, as they call it, when, to my surprise, I found it to be nothing but a little straw matted together, without sheet or anything else, but only one threadbare blanket, with double its weight of vermin. I was glad to get up and put on my clothes and lie as my companions did. Had we not been very tired, I am sure we should not have slept much that night. I made a promise to sleep no more in a bed, choosing rather to sleep in the open air before a fire.” Again, after being much longer away from home, Washington says in a letter to a friend: “Yours gave me the more pleasure as I received it among barbarians and an uncouth set of people. Since you received my letter of October last, I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed. But after walking a good deal all the day, I have lain down before the fire on a little hay, straw, fodder, or bear skin, whichever was to be had, with man, wife and children, like dogs and cats, and happy is he who gets nearest the fire. I have never had my clothes off, but have lain and slept in them, except the few nights I have been in Fredericksburg.”