In spite, therefore, of the rolling years, and of civil war, and emancipation, the Northern Neck of Virginia is in many respects much what it was when George Washington and Light Horse Harry Lee were born a month apart in the quaint and lovely old Westmoreland of the year 1732. The visitor to Mount Vernon comes away with a strong impression of Washington, the local magnate and world-wide hero. But Mount Vernon, in spite of its tomb and its relics, many of them actually used and handled by Washington himself, can hardly give one the eighteenth century atmosphere. To obtain that one must make a pilgrimage to the region of Washington’s birth. A fair shaft erected by the Federal Government now stands on the spot occupied by the homestead of Augustine Washington, the birthplace of his mighty son. The spot is as remote and lonely as it was when Washington’s eyes first saw the light, and the aspect of the region must be much what it was in that day. Doubtless the woodland has shrunk in area and the plowed land has widened. But there, in full view from the monument, are the land-locked tidal waters of the little stream, and eastward lies the broad lazy flood of the Potomac, idly moving beneath the soft overarching sky. Everywhere are the marks of an old civilization. The road that leads from the wharf at Wakefield on Monroe Creek to the monument is lined with cherry trees escaped from the old orchards of the neighborhood. The mockingbird sings in all the woodlands as it must have sung in the ears of Augustine Washington as he moved about his fields, and gray old log granaries of the eighteenth century pattern still stand amid piles of last year’s corncobs. Even to-day brand-new corn cribs are built in the same fashion of partly hewn logs. The crops are also those of the earlier century. The monument itself stands in the midst of a waving wheat field, and acres of Indian corn rustle green and rich as they must have rustled in the first hot summer of George Washington’s infancy.