George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 6, 10th edition.

[379] with each year were getting further and further

Chap. XLVI.} 1770. Oct.

down the river. When Washington in 1770, having established for the soldiers and officers who had established for the soldiers and officers who had served with him in the French war, their right to two hundred thousand acres in the western valley, went to select suitable tracts, he was obliged to descend to the Great Kenawha. As he floated in a canoe down the Ohio, whose banks he found enlivened by innumerable turkeys and other wild fowl, with many deer browsing on the shore or stepping down to the water's edge to drink, no good land escaped his eye. Where the soil and growth of timber were most inviting, he would walk through the woods, and set his mark on a maple, or elm, a hoop-wood, or ash, as the corner of a soldier's survey;¹ for he watched over the interests of his old associates in arms as sacredly as if he had been their trustee, and never ceased his care for them, till by his exertions, and ‘by these alone,’² he had secured to each one of them, or if they were dead, to their heirs, the full proportion of the bounty that had been promised. His journey to the wilderness was not without its pleasures; he amused himself with the sports of the forest, or observing new kinds of water-fowl, or taking the girth of the largest trees, one of which at a yard from the ground measured within two inches of five and forty feet. His fame had gone before him; the Red Men received him in Council with public honors. Nor did lie turn homewards without inquiring of Nicholson, an Indian interpreter, and of Conolly, an intelligent forester, the character of the country further