more dependent commercially and politically on the states between the Alleghanies and Mississippi than these central commonwealths are on them. The same divine Providence which directed this youth's steps into the Alleghanies had brought him speedily to his next post of duty, for family influence secured him an appointment as adjutant-general (with rank of major) over one of the four military districts into which Virginia was now divided for purposes of defense, a position for which he was as fitted by inclination as by frontier experience. This lad now received Dinwiddie's appointment. As a practical surveyor in the wilderness he possessed frontiersman's qualifications; as an apt and diligent student of military science, with a brother--trained under Admiral Vernon--as a practical tutor, he had in a degree a soldier's qualifications; if not a diplomat he was as shrewd a lad as chivalrous old Virginia had within her borders, still, at twenty-one, that boy of the sixty maxims, but hardened, steadied and made exceeding thoughtful by his life on Virginia's great black forest-bound horizon. All in all, he was far better fitted for this mission than any one could have known or guessed. His keen eye, quick perception, and daring spirit were now to be turned to something of more moment than links and chains or a shabby line of Virginian militia. It is not to be doubted that George Washington knew the danger he courted, at least very much better than we can appreciate it today. He had not lived three years on the frontier for nothing. He had heard of these French--of their bold invasion of the West, their growing trade, their cunning conciliation of the Indian, their sudden passion for fort building when they heard of the grant of land to the Ohio Company, to which his brothers belonged. Let who can doubt that he looked with envious eyes upon those fearless fleets of coureurs-de-bois and their woodland pilgrimaging. Who can doubt that the few stolid English traders who went over the mountains on poor Indian ponies made a sorry showing beside these roistering, picturesque, irrepressible Frenchmen who knew and sailed the sweet rivers of the great West? But the forests were filled with their sly, red-skinned proselytes. One swift rifle ball might easily be sent from a hidden covert to meet the stripling envoy from the English who was come to spy out the land and report both its giants and its grapes. Yet, after one day's preparation, he was ready to leave a home, rich in comfort and culture, a host of warm friends, and bury himself five hundred miles deep in the western forests, to sleep on the ground in the dead of winter, wade in rivers running with ice, and face a hundred known and a thousand unknown risks.