Hunting Lore 281 



never have been what he was had he not taken de- 

 light in feats of hardihood, of daring, and of bodily 

 prowess. He was strongly drawn to those field 

 sports which demand in their follower the exercise 

 of the manly virtues courage, endurance, physical 

 address. As a young man, clad in the distinctive 

 garb of the backwoodsman, the fringed and tasseled 

 hunting-shirt, he led the life of a frontier surveyor; 

 and like his fellow adventurers in wilderness ex- 

 ploration and Indian campaigning, he was often 

 forced to trust to the long rifle for keeping his party 

 in food. When at his home, at Mount Vernon, he 

 hunted from simple delight in the sport. 



His manuscript diaries, preserved in the State 

 Department at Washington, are full of entries con- 

 cerning his feats in the chase; almost all of them 

 naturally falling in the years between the ending of 

 the French war and the opening of the Revolution- 

 ary struggle against the British, or else in the period 

 separating his service as Commander-in-chief of the 

 Continental armies from his term of office as Presi- 

 dent of the Republic. These entries are scattered 

 through others dealing with his daily duties in over- 

 seeing his farm and mill, his attendance at the Vir- 

 ginia House of Burgesses, his journeys, the drill of 

 the local militia, and all the various interests of his 

 many-sided life. Fond though he was of hunting, 

 he was wholly incapable of the career of inanity led 



