We cannot be sure just when young Clark set out from his home, but we find him in the little town of Pittsburg early in the summer of 1772, and we can well suppose he made the long trip over Braddock's Road from Virginia with some friends or neighbors from Caroline County, with whom he joined himself for the purpose of looking at the land of which he had heard so much, and possibly picking out a little tract of land in the Ohio Valley for himself. As a surveyor of some experience he was in a position to offer his services to any one desiring them, and thus turn an honest penny in the meantime. Of the wars and bloody skirmishes fought around this town every Virginia boy had heard; through all of George Rogers Clark's youth great questions were being debated here in these sunny Alleghany meadows or in the shadowy forests--and the arguments were of iron and lead. The French had come down the rivers from the Great Lakes to seize the Ohio Valley; the colonists had pushed slowly across the Alleghanies to occupy the same splendid land. Nothing but war could have settled such a bitter quarrel; and, as the Clark boy now looked for the first time upon the relics of those small but savage battles, his heart no doubt warmed to his Virginian patriots who had saved the West to America. How little did the lad know that there was another savage war to be fought for this Ohio Valley, and that he himself was to be its hero! All along the route to Pittsburg the boy and his comrades, whoever they may have been, kept their eyes open for good farm sites; perhaps they were surprised to find that all the land beside and adjacent to Braddock's Road was already "taken up." Washington himself had acquired that two-hundred-and-thirty-two-acre tract in Great Meadows where Fort Necessity stood; not far from Stewart's Crossing (Connellsville, Pa.) Washington had the other piece of land with the mill on it. Everywhere Clark went in the West he found land which had been taken up by the shrewd Mount Vernon farmer or his agents. I do not believe Clark begrudged Washington a single acre, but was, on the other hand, pleased to know that the Colonel was to receive some good return for all his hard campaigning in the West in addition to his paltry pay as an officer.