Historic Boyhoods

Peter the Great

The Boy of the Kremlin: 1672-1725

The halls of the Kremlin, the Czar's palace in Moscow, were filled with a wild rabble of soldiers on a winter afternoon near the end of the seventeenth century. The guards of the late Czar Alexis were storming through the maze of corridors and state apartments, breaking statues, tearing down tapestries, and piercing and cutting to pieces invaluable paintings with their spears and swords.

They were big, savage-faced men, pets of the half-civilized Russian rulers, and were called the Streltsi Guard.

They had broken into the Kremlin in order to see the boy who was now Czar, so that they might be sure that his stepmother had not hidden him away, as the rumor went, in order that her own son Peter might have the throne for himself. But once inside the Kremlin many of the soldiers devoted themselves to pillage, until the ringleaders raised the cry, "Where is the Czar Ivan? Show him to us! Show the boy Ivan to us! Where is he?"

In a small room on one of the higher floors a little group of women and noblemen, all thoroughly frightened, were gathered about two boys. The noise of the attack on the palace had come to their ears some time before; they had seen from the windows the mutinous soldiers climbing the walls and beating down the few loyal servants who had withstood them. The din was growing more terrific every instant. It was the matter of only a few minutes before the rioters would break into the room.

"We must decide at once, friends," said the Czarina Natalia. "If they enter this room they'll not stop at killing any of us."

The smaller of the two boys, a sturdy lad of eleven years, spoke up: "Let me go out on to the Red Staircase with Ivan, mother. When they see that we are both here they'll be satisfied."

A dozen objections were raised by the frightened men and women of the court. It was much too dangerous to trust the lives of the two boys to the whim of such a maddened mob.

"Nevertheless Peter is right," said Natalia. "It's the only chance left to us. They think I have done some harm to Ivan. The only way to prove that false is for him to stand before them, and my son must go with him."

The small boy who had spoken before took these words as final. "Come, Ivan," said he, and took the other's hand in his. Ivan, a tall, delicate boy, whose face was white with fear, gripped Peter's hand hard. He was used to trusting implicitly to his half-brother, although the latter was two years younger than he.

One of the noblemen opened the door, and the two boys went out of the room and crossed the hall to the top of the great Red Staircase. They looked down on the mob of soldiers who were gradually surging up the stairs, brandishing swords and halberds, fighting among each other for the possession of some treasure, and calling continually, "The Czar! Where are the boys Ivan and Peter? Where are they?"

At first in their excitement no one noticed the two boys on the stairway. Ivan, who was by nature timid, shrank away from their sight as much as he could, but Peter, who was of a different make, stood out in full view, and held fast to his brother's hand. He had inherited the iron nerve of the strongest of his ancestors. He looked at the mutinous rioters with bold, fearless eyes.

Presently a soldier caught sight of the younger boy and raised a cry loud above the general din. "There is the boy Peter, but where is Ivan? The Czar! The Czar!"

A score of voices took up the cry as all eyes were turned on the landing, and many men started up the stairs. "There is Peter, but where is the boy Ivan?" came the deafening chorus.

"Ivan is here with me," said Peter, his voice clear and high. He tried to pull Ivan nearer to him so that the men might see him. "Stand up where they can see you, Ivan!" he begged. "There's nothing to be afraid of. They only want to see their new Czar."

Trembling with fear the older boy, who had inherited all the weakness of his race, and none of its strength, was finally induced to step close to Peter. So, side by side, their hands clasped, the two looked down on the crowded stairway, and faced the mob of soldiers. They made a strange picture, two small boys, standing quite alone, fronting that sea of passionate, angry faces.

At sight of Ivan another cry arose. "There's the Czar! Hail Ivan! Hail the son of the great Alexis!"

For a moment the onward rush of the mob was checked, but only for a moment. Three or four soldiers started up the stairs, their lances pointed at Peter, shouting, "What shall we do with the son of the false woman Natalia?" They came so close to the boy that their spears almost touched him before they stopped. Had he turned to run no one can say what might have happened, but he did not turn, he did not even draw back nor show a single sign of fear.

"I am the son of the Czar Alexis also, and I am not afraid of any of you!"

The boy's calm eyes fronted the nearest soldiers steadily. The men heard his words and hesitated.

"Peter, the son of Alexis, is not afraid of his own father's guards!" the boy continued. "That is why I came out here when you called me."

In the hush that had followed his first words his voice carried clear to all the crowding men. When he finished there came a silence, and then of a sudden cheer on cheer rose on the stairs and through the hall. "Peter, the son of Alexis! Hail Peter! Hail the two boy Czars!"

The nearest soldiers dropped the points of their spears and joined in the shouting. A flush came into the younger boy's face and he smiled, and squeezed Ivan's hand tighter. He knew that the danger had passed.

Slowly the soldiers who had climbed nearest to the boys drew back down the stairs. Swords were returned to scabbards, harsh voices grew quieter, and within a quarter of an hour the Red Staircase and the great hall were empty of men.

Then the door of the room from which the two boys had come opened, and Natalia and her women stepped out. The Czarina, a woman of courage herself, took Peter in her arms. "My brave son," she murmured, "thou art worthy of thy father. I would have stood beside thee, but the people hate me, and it would have been worse for us all."

"I needed no one, little mother," said Peter. "If I am ever to be a ruler I must not fear to face my own men." Then his face grew more serious. "But if I ever am Czar they will not break into the Kremlin this way, mother, nor wilt thou need to hide thyself from them."

"God grant it be so, Peter!" answered Natalia. "I think they've learned much from thee this very day."

The Streltsi had indeed learned that the boy Peter was no coward, and their dislike changed to affection; but there were others in Moscow who plotted and planned against him, because the family of the late Czar's first wife were very powerful in Russia and they hated his second wife Natalia, and her son, who had been his father's favorite.

Everything that conspirators could do to break the boy's spirit was done; he was time and again placed in peril of his life; he was threatened and tempted and slandered to the people, but all to no avail. His mother did her best to shield him from his enemies, but when she found that her care was not enough she trusted to his own remarkable judgment and courage. These never failed either the boy or his mother.

As time passed it grew more and more clear that Peter was as strong as his poor stepbrother Ivan was weak, and in order to satisfy the people the younger boy was made joint-Czar with the elder.

The real power in Russia then, however, was the Princess Sophia, Peter's half-sister, a bitter enemy of both the boy and his mother. She did her best to break her stepbrother's spirit, hoping that he might come to some untimely end, as so many of the royal family had already done. She knew that Ivan was simply a weak tool in her hands, and so bent all her energies to try and ruin the younger Czar by taking away all restraint from over him, and letting him indulge every pleasure and whim.

He was given a palace of his own in a small village outside Moscow, and Sophia selected fifty boys of his own age to be his playmates. She had his former teachers dismissed and chose such comrades for him as she thought would grow up idle, vicious men.

Fortunately Peter's character was not so easily ruined. His mother and his old teachers had given him the beginning of an education and instead of falling into Sophia's snares, he immediately started to turn his playmates into scholars.

He formed a sort of military school, where the boys practiced all the discipline necessary in camp. He himself set to work to learn to use different tools, and in general he studied the trades of his people. He managed to get teachers who could instruct the boys in history and geography, and as a result instead of being good for nothing the circle of boys in the little palace became unusually energetic and active-minded. When he finally left the palace it had become a well-organized military school, and continued to be run as such for a long time afterward.

When the Princess Sophia realized that these plans of hers were failing, she decided on a more desperate measure. On the night of August 7, 1689, Peter was suddenly waked in the middle of night by fugitive soldiers coming from the Kremlin, who warned him that Sophia had gathered a band of soldiers to come out to his palace and kill him. The boy, realizing his extreme peril, jumped out of bed, and throwing on a few clothes ran to the stables, where he found his favorite horse and set out with some comrades into the neighboring forest.

There they stayed practically in hiding until officers came from the palace bringing him food and clothing, and gradually gathering about him until he had quite a small body-guard. By this time he had made up his mind what to do.

Feeling sufficiently strong with his friends, he finally set out for a monastery, thinking to find safe refuge there until the storm should pass. Here more friends came to join him, and as the news of Sophia's plot to kill the boy Czar was spread through the country, a new enthusiasm for the youthful Peter sprang up, and the very troops that had formerly sided with the Princess now denounced her as a traitor to Russia. Peter wrote to his stepsister asking for explanations about the plot at the Kremlin, but the Princess could make no satisfactory reply.

The monastery was now crowded with officers of the court who had come to realize that Sophia's power was gone and that the boy Czar's strength was rising rapidly. The time had come when he was strong enough to strike. He marched on the Kremlin and captured Sophia and those who had been in the conspiracy with her. Some of the Streltsi Guard who had taken part against him were tried and executed, and the Princess Sophia was shut up in a convent for the remainder of her life.

Such events did not tend to make the boy a merciful ruler, but surrounded as he was by traitors and spies he was compelled to rule with an iron hand if he was to rule at all.

From this time dates the beginning of his real influence in Russia. The army had been poorly organized. Now the young King set to work to drill it as effectively as he had drilled his playmates. He learned how cannon were built, and studied the manufacture of all kinds of firearms. About the same time he became deeply interested in ship-building, and determined to build a fleet of war-vessels on Lake Plestchéief.

He took some young men of his own age with him to the bank of the lake and there built a one-storied wooden house, a very primitive building, the windows filled with mica instead of glass, and set a double-headed eagle with a gilt wooden crown over the door to show it was the Czar's residence. Here he worked hard all one winter, he himself taking a hand in all the building that was done, laboring like any carpenter and enjoying the work far more than the state ceremonies he was obliged to go through with at the Kremlin.

But even when he was so far from Moscow and so actively engaged, he sent continual messages to the mother who had so often shielded him from harm. Once he wrote to her as follows:

The Russians of that day knew little about building ships, and so Peter finally went to Amsterdam. Here he dressed like a Dutch sea-captain and spent his time with sailors and ship-builders, and thoroughly enjoyed the difference between this new life and that at home. Many of his native customs he now learned to look upon as uncouth. The Russians had poor taste in dress; the Imperial Guards wore old-fashioned uniforms consisting of a long gown, which made it very difficult for them to move rapidly. Peter saw some French soldiers and at once decided to adopt their smarter and more serviceable style of dress.

Peter the Great

In the same way he changed the old Russian military drill to something resembling that of the other European countries. He had new carriages and furniture and foods imported from France and England, and tried to make Moscow more like a modern city than like the semi-barbarous Asiatic village it had been. The Russian men almost all wore long, flowing beards, and this fashion Peter quickly changed, insisting that the men about him should adopt the fashion of the French court.

It is hard to realize how far behind the rest of the countries of Europe the Russia of those days was; yet it is due almost entirely to the young Czar Peter that this great northern country finally came out from semi-darkness. It must not be supposed that these great changes were at first popular with the court; there was tremendous opposition to almost everything Peter did, but the people gradually realized that he was really working for their benefit and that he was deeply interested in improving their condition. Slowly his popularity grew with the middle and lower classes, until finally they spoke of their "little Czar," as they called him affectionately, almost as though he were really one of themselves.

Few rulers have had a harder task than did Peter. All during his youth the nobles plotted against him, and as he grew to manhood he escaped assassination again and again by the narrowest of chances, but every time he had to face danger he grew more self-reliant and more determined, and gradually his grip on the men of both court and army grew so strong that they realized places had changed, and that they were as absolutely his servants as he was their master.

In time Peter became a great king, a fearless, purposeful ruler who knit his people together as no other Czar had ever been able to do. He led the armies he had himself drilled to many victories. He built a great fleet in the Baltic Sea. He established a new capital near the shores of the Baltic, and named it after his own patron saint, St. Petersburg.

The history of his life is full of tremendous difficulties and dangers, but he fronted each one as he had fronted the riotous Streltsi Guards when he was a boy of eleven, and so history has given him the title of most powerful of all Russian Czars and has called him "Peter the Great."

Frederick the Great

The Boy of Potsdam: 1712-1788

A little boy and girl sat playing on a harpsichord in one of the great stiffly-furnished and lofty-ceilinged rooms of the Potsdam Palace, outside Berlin. The boy wore his yellow hair in long curls, his eyes were merry and he laughed often, while his sister, who was a little older, seemed quite as happy. The children were practicing for their music lesson, and only too glad to be free of their teachers for a time, because music was dearest to them both.

Without a word of warning the door of the room was thrown open, and a big, heavy-faced man stood on the threshold.

"What's all this?" he cried, his voice snarling with anger, and his small eyes shot with red. "Haven't I given orders that you're never to touch that thing again?"

At the sound of the man's voice both children had jumped from their chairs and stood, stiff as ramrods, facing the speaker. The boy had raised his hand to the side of his head in salute.

"Please, sir," said the girl, "we're both so very fond of music."

"Silence," commanded the man, who was no other than their father, Frederick William, King of Prussia. "Fritz can speak for himself; he doesn't need a girl to defend him."

"Wilhelmina has told you, sir," said the boy, "how much we both love music. Indeed I'd rather listen to it than do anything else, and I want to learn how to play it for myself. I don't care anything about being a soldier."

The King's face was almost purple with anger. He looked as though he would box the boy's ears on the spot, but he held himself in check.

"You little brat!" he cried. "A soldier you shall be, and nothing else! Do you think the kingdom of Prussia can be ruled by a crazy fool of a musician? Don't talk to me of harpsichords, or books, or pictures. You're not to be a woman, but a king!"

The boy knew his father too well to attempt any answer; there was no one in Prussia who would dare speak freely before King Frederick William.

After scowling at his son in silence for some minutes the man spoke again. "Listen to my orders and see that you obey them. From to-day your music-masters are discharged, every instrument is moved from the palace, and if either of you two is found playing such things I will have you locked in your rooms for a week to live on barley and water. Now, sir, step before me to the hair-dresser. I'll have those locks of yours shorn so that you'll look less like a girl and more like a grenadier."

Fritz, keeping back the tears in mingled shame and terror, walked to the door and paced down the hall before his father. He tried to hold himself straight like a soldier, but it was hard when he felt as though he were being marched to execution.

The King handed the boy over to the hair-dresser, and in fifteen minutes the curls were all gone and Fritz's hair was close-cropped like a man's. As soon as he was free he ran to his mother's room, and there the gentle Queen, Sophia Dorothea, took him in her arms and comforted him. She knew how sensitive her little son was, how absolutely different from his father, and she could sympathize with both the children's suffering under the King's cruelty.

For once the mother dared to disobey her husband. The next week she told the two children to go to a distant part of the palace grounds where there was a deep wood, and see what they should find there. They obeyed, and ran eagerly down the path to the forest where they had often played under the trees and in the caves in the rocks. They came to a little greenwood circle completely hidden from the roads and there found their music-master. He led them to a cave, and showed them Wilhelmina's little spinnet, and Fritz's flute lying on it. That was their mother's surprise. She had arranged that the children's music teacher should meet them out there and give them the lessons they wanted. Boy and girl were happy again; they took up their music eagerly, and were soon playing as of old. Perhaps the very secrecy lent the lessons charm.

The hours spent in the forest and cave were a great success, but one day Fritz found a small drum at the palace, and forgetting the King's orders he started to march about the halls beating it, followed by the admiring Wilhelmina. Suddenly, in the middle of the triumphal procession, the King came upon them. Poor Fritz dropped the drumsticks and stood at attention, while Wilhelmina, behind him, grew white with fear of what should happen.

To their amazement the King's stern face softened; he smiled, then he laughed and clapped his hands. "Ah, Fritz, now you're a soldier! I mistook you for one of my own guard, boy."

The King was delighted. He thought that at last his son was fired with martial fervor. While the boy went back through the halls beating his drum Frederick called the Queen to watch his soldier son, and immediately ordered the court artist to paint a picture of the scene on canvas. A day or two later he told Fritz of a plan he had in store. He would form a military company of boys of his own age for him, build them an arsenal on the palace grounds, and have them drilled by officers of the army.

With the King to speak was to act. A month had not passed before the small boy, dressed in a general's uniform, found himself in command of about three hundred youths of his own age, all properly equipped with uniforms and arms, and known as "The Crown Prince Cadets." They made a remarkable contrast to that other regiment of which King Frederick William was so proud, which was made up of giants, men all over six feet six inches tall, seized wherever they were found in Prussia and elsewhere and forced into his army.

The boy general and his cadets were drilled hours at a time day after day by the Prussian officers, in the hope of making soldiers of them and nothing else. Fritz hated it; he wanted to read and to learn music, and day by day he found less and less time to steal off to those wonderful meetings in the woods or to romp with Wilhelmina in the schoolroom. The French governess who had taught him was taken away, and he was placed under military tutors who made him learn gunnery and battle tactics at the arsenal which his father had built for him on the grounds.

When the boy was ten the King started to take him to all the military reviews. In going from garrison to garrison the King rode on a hard wagon called a sausage-car, which was simply a padded pole about ten feet long on which the riders sat astride. Ten or more men would jolt over the roads on such cars with the King summer and winter, and he made the boy ride in front of him, through the broiling sun or the winter snow, waking him whenever he fell asleep by pulling his ear and saying, "Too much sleep stupefies a fellow."

In such iron fashion the father did his best to change the sensitive, gentle nature of his son to something like his own.

At the age of ten Fritz's days were marked out hour by hour by Frederick William. Not even Sunday was free. He was marched from teacher to teacher, all sports were denied him, and he was never allowed to read or play. His hair was kept close cut, his clothes were heavy and coarse, he was treated more like a prisoner than a prince. To the boy's masters the King gave one direction: "Teach him to seek all glory in the soldier profession." When his mother or sister dared to interfere the King would turn on them in a rage; Wilhelmina was sent time and again to her room, to be starved until she grew more docile.

The boy's time was divided between Berlin and the Palace of Wusterhausen, a country seat some twenty miles outside of the capital. The palace was a very simple dwelling set in the middle of swampy fields, with a fringe of thickets. In the grounds were many natural fish-ponds, and game of all kinds was plentiful in the woods. The somber old monarch loved this place, and had built there a fountain with stone steps, where he liked to sit in the evening and smoke his long porcelain pipe. He often had his dinner served by the fountain, and afterward would throw himself down on the grass for a nap. Aside from this simple entertainment, the King's only pleasure lay in hunting in the woods.

The children and their mother found Wusterhausen very unattractive. The only pets they were allowed were two black bears, very ugly and vicious. They had no comforts indoors, and were treated as though they were children of the meanest peasant. Some boys might have found sport in the fish-ponds, the groves and the streams about the place, filled as they were with fish and game, but Fritz cared nothing for such things. Their loneliness drew the two children closer and closer together, and their dislike of their father increased with each year that he took them out to Wusterhausen.

The father, on his part, was growing more and more contemptuous of his son. He found Fritz cared nothing for the army, nothing for the chase, that the hardship and exposure of rough life were torture to him. Worse than that, he had discovered some verses in French that Fritz had written, and spoke of him scornfully to the men of his court as "the French flute-player and poet." It would have been very hard for the boy if he had not had a mother and sister who were so devoted to him, and did everything they possibly could to protect him from his father's tyranny.

When he was fourteen, Frederick William appointed Fritz captain of his Grenadier Guards. This was the regiment made up of giants, and was one of the most singular passions of the very singular old King. He sent men through the whole of Europe and Asia to search for very tall men. Some of the regiment were almost nine feet high. When a foreign monarch wished to curry favor with the King of Prussia he would send him a giant. The King showered favors on these men. He had court painters paint portraits of each one of them. They were the very centre of that great army which was the sole pride of the old warrior, and which he was building up so that it should become the greatest military force in Europe.

Fritz tried to do his duty as captain of the regiment, and gradually acquired something of a military bearing. For a short time his father was pleased, but his pleasure did not last long; for the boy could not keep away from the fascinations of music and of books, and all of the various arts which were constantly coming into Prussia from France.

The flute was Fritz's favorite instrument, and it so happened that a very celebrated teacher of the flute came from Dresden about this time, and gave lessons in the Prussian capital. As soon as Fritz learned that this man was a splendid teacher he arranged to have him come secretly to his room at Potsdam. The boy's mother knew of this plan, and did her best to keep his secret; but it was a very dangerous matter, for the old King was growing more and more suspicious, and also more and more fierce. A friend of Fritz's, who was about his own age, stood guard outside the boy's room, while he was having his lessons on the flute, and another guard was stationed at the entrance to the palace grounds with orders to send word at once if the King should appear.

When Fritz was satisfied of his safety, he would go up to his own room, throw aside the tight, heavy military coat which he hated, and put on a flowing French dressing-gown, scarlet colored, and embroidered with gold. Then, dressed to suit himself, he would take his music lesson, and enjoy every minute of the stolen pleasure.

One day, however, in the middle of his playing, the friend at the door rushed into the room announcing that the King was coming. This boy and the teacher seized the flutes and music books and ran into a wood-closet, where they stood shaking with fear. Fritz threw off his dressing-gown, pulled on his military coat and sat down at a table, opening a book.

Now the old King, his brows bent with anger, burst into the room. The sight of his delicate son reading seemed like fuel to his rage. He never minced his words, and proceeded to heap abuse on the head of the poor Prince, when all of a sudden he caught sight of the end of the scarlet gown sticking out from behind a screen. "What is that?" he cried, and stepping across the room pulled the gown out. Beside himself with rage he crammed it into the fireplace, and threw after it many of the ornaments the boy had used to decorate his room. Then he walked to the bookshelves and swept all the volumes to the floor, saying that he would have a bookseller buy the library next day, because his son was to be a soldier and not a scholar. For an hour he stayed there, pacing up and down the room, lecturing Fritz until the boy was almost sick with shame. Finally he left, and the two in the wood-closet were able to come out, both of them almost as badly frightened as the Prince himself.

But if the King treated his son so badly, he treated his daughter Wilhelmina none the less so. He could hardly stand the sight of her at times, and her mother had to arrange a series of screens in her room so that when Frederick William came to see her the daughter could escape behind them. After such scenes Fritz and Wilhelmina would try to comfort each other, but the boy was gradually growing more sullen and rebellious.

Again and again the boy thought of escape; he would have been only too glad to give up his position as Prince in exchange for the chance to live simply in some foreign land, free to follow his own tastes as other boys did theirs. He would have made the attempt, but he knew only too well that should he escape his father's hand would fall in terrible wrath on his dear sister Wilhelmina. He decided to stay and bear the burdens of this life the King had planned for him rather than desert his mother and sister. He was not a coward even if he was not made of iron.

At last the boy felt that he must act in self-defense. His father, suffering from the gout, took to flogging Fritz in the very presence of the lords and ladies of the court. The boy had pride, though his father had done his best to kill it. Once, after striking blows at Fritz's head before the assembled court, the King cried, "Had I been so treated by my father, I would have blown my brains out. But this fellow has no honor. He takes all that comes."

Fritz could stand such treatment no longer. Praying that Wilhelmina might not suffer he planned an escape with a friend.

His father was taking him on a journey to the Rhine in the company of a small guard of soldiers who were told to treat the boy like a prisoner. Three officers were ordered to ride in the same carriage with Fritz, and never to leave him alone. The King was a hard traveler, and seemed positively to wish for extra hardships and fatigues, the party scarcely stopping for food or sleep. At one place, however, a short stay was made, and there Fritz planned to escape.

They had arrived at the town very late, and the boy with his officers slept in a barn, as was not infrequently the case. The usual hour for starting in the morning was three o'clock. A little after midnight Fritz saw that his companions were sound asleep, and rose and crept out into the open air. He had made arrangements with a servant to meet him with horses on the village green. The boy reached the green and found the horses, but at the same moment one of the guards, who had been awakened by the noise Fritz made in leaving the barn, caught up with him, and demanded of the servant who held the horses: "Sirrah! What are you doing with those beasts?"

The man answered, "I am getting the horses ready for the start."

"We do not start till five o'clock. Take them back at once to the stable." The officer pretended not to see Fritz, who had to slink back at his heels to the barn, fully conscious that his chance to escape was gone.

News of this attempt reached the King, and the next day, when he met his son, he said sarcastically, "Ah, you are still here then? I thought that by this time you would have been in Paris."

All the boy's spirit had not been crushed out of him, and he dared to answer, "I certainly would have been there now had I really wished it."

Again he tried to escape, and again he was caught, and this time he was brought directly to the King. The father stared at his son as though he were some wild beast, and then said angrily: "Why did you attempt to desert?"

"I wanted to escape because you never treat me like your son, but like some common slave."

"You're a cowardly deserter," said the King, "without any feelings of honor."

"I have as much honor as you have," answered Fritz, "and I've done only what I've heard you say you would have done if you had been treated as I have."

The King, maddened beyond description, drew his sword, and would have struck the boy had not a general in attendance thrown himself between them, exclaiming: "Sire, you may kill me, but spare your son."

The boy was taken out of the room and locked in prison, where he was guarded by two sentries with fixed bayonets. The King proclaimed him a deserter from the army, and ordered him tried for that crime. It is small wonder that Fritz declared he would have been glad to exchange his place for that of the poorest serf in Prussia.

Fritz was placed in a strongly barred room like a dungeon, with no furniture in it, and lighted by a single slit in the wall so high that the boy could not look out of it. The coarsest brown clothes were given him to wear. He was allowed only one or two books. His food was bought at a near-by butcher-shop, and was cut for him, for he was not allowed a knife. The door of his prison was opened three times a day for ventilation, and he was provided with a single tallow candle which had to be put out by seven o'clock in the evening. This was the way the Crown Prince of Prussia lived when he was nineteen years old, and if the father did not actually succeed in breaking all the boy's spirit, he was at least changing this lovable, gentle-natured youth into a stern and gloomy young man.

Eventually the boy was released from his prison, but as long as his father lived he was treated with all the harshness the King's mind could devise. His sister Wilhelmina was kept away from him, and finally married to a man for whom she cared little. Fritz was cut off from all interests save that of the army, but gradually he began to acquire something of his father's interest in creating a splendid fighting machine.

In time he became King of Prussia himself, free at last to do as he would. He sought out men of genius, musicians, poets, and thinkers. He offered Voltaire, the great Frenchman, a home with him, and his happiest hours were spent in his company, or listening to music, or playing the flute he had loved as a boy. But that was only one side of him, and the side which was least seen. On the world's side he was the grasping ruler, the great general who forced war on all his neighbors, and who came to be known as the conqueror of Europe.

The boy Fritz of Prussia might have become one of Europe's greatest sovereigns, for he was naturally endowed with a love of all the finer things of life. Instead he became a despot who plunged Europe for years into the horrors of useless war. For this misfortune his father was responsible. The loving mother and sister could not counterbalance the terrible severity of the cruel King. Gradually Fritz changed from the sunny lad who had played in the gardens of Potsdam with Wilhelmina to a severe and arbitrary monarch.

His father had taught him that a country's greatness depended on its soldiers, and so Fritz made Prussia an army and compelled the world to admit the might of his troops. To Europe he was the ambitious tyrant, Frederick the Great. It was only to Wilhelmina and a few friends that he showed a little of that softer nature which had been his as the boy of Potsdam.

At the Charlottenburg Palace hangs the famous portrait of him playing upon the drum. It was a long step from that boy to the man Frederick the Great.

George Washington

The Boy of the Old Dominion: 1732-1799

A few miles below Mount Vernon, on the Potomac River, was the beautiful estate of Belvoir, belonging to an English gentleman of rank named Lord Fairfax. The broad Potomac wound about the base of the lawn that sloped gently downward from the old colonial mansion which sat upon a height looking out across the exquisite Virginia country.

The Potomac was not a busy river then, and the only trade that came up it was such as was needed to supply the rich planters on the shores with food and clothing. From the porch of Belvoir one might see an occasional sailing vessel dropping up with the tide, lately come from England to make a tour of the seaboard states, and to take home cotton and tobacco in exchange for the silks and satins brought out to the colonies.

A great man in both England and America was Lord Fairfax; he owned many estates in both countries, but his favorite was this of Belvoir, not only because of its great natural beauty, but because he liked the company of the Virginia planters, who joined a certain frankness and simplicity of life with all the charms of European refinement.

Lord Fairfax kept up all the old English customs in his Potomac home. He had a passion for horses and for hunting, and his pack of foxhounds was the best in the colony. Sometimes he had the company of men of his own age to hunt with him, but he was always sure that he could count upon the fellowship of a certain boy, the son of a neighbor, named Washington. Whenever the hunting season arrived, Lord Fairfax sent word to Mrs. Washington that he would be glad of the company of her eldest son George, and a day or two later the boy would appear at Belvoir, keen to mount horse and be off for the chase.

On one such winter day Lord Fairfax and his friend George were hunting alone. They had had a good run and caught their fox, and were returning home in a leisurely fashion across the rolling country south of the hills. They were a curious couple.

The Englishman was nearly sixty years old, more than six feet tall, very gaunt and big-boned, with gray eyes overhung by bushy brows, sharp features, and keen, aquiline nose. He had been a great beau in his youthful days in London, and there was no mistaking the mark of authority that sat upon him.

The boy who rode by his side was not yet sixteen years old, and yet he scarcely seemed a boy, nor would his manner have led one to treat him as such. He was unusually tall and strong for his years, and he had so trained himself in a strict code of conduct that a singular gravity and decision marked his bearing. This might have had much to do with the bond of affection between the man and the youth. Lord Fairfax was not ashamed to listen seriously to the opinions of young George Washington, and he had learnt that those opinions were not apt to be trivial, but the result of deep observation and thought.

Mrs. Washington Urges George Not to Enter the Navy

As they rode home the man asked the boy what he was planning to do. He knew that Mrs. Washington was poor and that her son would have to make his own way in the world.

"What should you like to be, George?" he inquired. "I dare say you've had enough schooling by this time."

"The sea was my first choice, sir," was the answer. "My brother Lawrence got me a commission in the navy, but at the last minute mother asked me not to leave her. She has had hard times bringing us all up, and I felt, as the eldest, that I ought to stay at home; so I gave up my commission."

"That was hard," said Lord Fairfax, "and yet I think you did well. There should be openings for a young man in the colonies. It seems to me I heard that you were very fond of the surveyor's work."

The boy looked up quickly, and his bright eyes flashed. "So I am, sir. I have made surveys of all the fields near school, and have got the figures in my books at home. I should like very much to be a real surveyor."

"Well, George," said Lord Fairfax, "perhaps I can help you then. I've bought lands out west, the other side the Appalachians. It's a big tract I own, but I know little about it, and I'm told that men are settling out there and taking it up themselves. I should like to have it surveyed, and I think you're just the one to do it."

"I should like it above all things," said the boy, "if you think you can trust me to do the work properly."

Lord Fairfax smiled slightly as he looked down at his companion. He was apt to be somewhat amused at Washington's serious modesty. "I'll show you the plans after dinner. I almost wish I could go out there with you."

They were now nearing Belvoir, and the man put spurs to his horse and dashed across the intervening fields. The boy followed close behind, sitting his horse to perfection. Just before they reached Belvoir they came to a high hedge. Lord Fairfax put his horse at it and went flying over. A second later George had followed him. There was no feat of horsemanship to which he was not equal.

A little later dinner was served in the big dining-room at Belvoir. Lord Fairfax had his brother's family living with him, and with one or two friends who were apt to be staying at the house they made quite a large party. The long polished mahogany table gleamed with silver and glass. Candles on it and in sconces about the white paneled walls shed a pleasant lustre over the dinner party.

It was a time when men and women paid great attention to dress. The ladies wore light flowered gowns, and the men brilliant coats and knee-breeches, with lace stocks and white powdered hair. Their manners were of the courts of Europe, polished in the extreme, and they had all been trained to make an art of conversation. Negro servants waited on the table, and the noble lord presided at its head with something of the majesty of a medieval baron in his castle. There were young people present, and George sat with them, paying gallant speeches to the girls and telling stories of sport to the boys. He was a popular youth, having a singularly gentle manner which made him a great favorite with those of his own age.

After dinner Lord Fairfax took George to his study, and spread out the plans of his western estate. He told the boy just where to go and what to do, and George made notes in a small pocketbook, asking questions now and then which showed a remarkable knowledge of the surveyor's work.

"When can you start?" Lord Fairfax asked, as he finished with the plans.

"At once," said the boy, "if mother can spare me, and I think she can."

"Good. I'd like another hunt with you before you go, but when there's work afoot a man shouldn't tarry. The sooner you start the better."

A little later George was sleeping soundly in the guest-room above-stairs dreaming of the adventures he hoped soon to have.

On a March day in 1748 Washington set out with young George Fairfax, a nephew of the English lord, to make the surveying expedition. Their road led by Ashley's Gap, a deep pass through the Blue Ridge, that picturesque line of mountains which had so far marked the boundary of civilized Virginia.

When they reached the pass they found at its base a rapidly rising river. The melting snow which still lingered on the hilltops had swollen the stream and in places had made the road almost impassable. The two horsemen, by searching for fords, managed to make their way through the pass, and came out into the wide, smiling valley of Virginia, bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghanies. Here flowed that picturesque river called by the Indian name of Shenandoah, which means "the Daughter of the Stars."

The first stop the travelers made was at a rough lodge house where one of Lord Fairfax's bailiffs lived, and here the actual work of surveying began. Spring was rapidly coming, and young George Washington was by no means blind to the beauties of the country in that season. He tried, however, to look about him with a practical eye. He studied the valley for building sites. He examined the soil. He made carefully measured maps and drawings, after using his surveyor's rod and chain. When he had learned all that he wanted of this locality, he followed the valley down toward the Potomac, he and Fairfax camping out at nights under the trees, sleeping beside a watch-fire, and keeping ever on the alert for attack by Indians or wild animals.

When they had reached the river they found it so swollen with spring floods that there seemed no way of crossing it. Finally, however, they met an Indian with a birch-bark canoe and bargained with him to take them across. In this way, swimming their horses, they reached the Maryland side, and set out again westward.

Shortly after they had left the river they came to a planter's house where they stayed over night. The next day they were surprised by the arrival of a war party of thirty Indians carrying scalps won in battle. The planter knew how to treat the Indians, and soon made friends with them by offering them whiskey. George had seen little of the red men and begged them to hold a war-dance.

The white men and the red went out into a meadow and there built a fire, round which the braves took their seats. The chief made a speech telling of the tribe's deeds of valor, and calling on the warriors to win new triumphs. Gradually one by one the reclining members of the band rose and circled about the fire in a slow swinging step. Two Indians at a little distance beat upon a rough drum made of wood covered with deerskin and half filled with water.

As the chief's voice rose higher and higher and the music grew louder and louder, more and more men joined the dance, until finally all the tribe was dancing about the fire, and their pace grew ever faster. Now, from time to time, one would leap in the air uttering savage cries and yells, then another, and finally all seemed absolutely lost in a sort of demon's frenzy. Suddenly, at a sharp command from the chief, the dance and the music ceased, and the warriors came up to their white friends smiling and asking for more whiskey.

The scene made a deep impression on George Washington. So far he had lived only among white people, and knew little of the Indian in his native haunts, but from the date of this war-dance he began to study the red man's character, and before long he had become an expert in the art of dealing with these people.

For a month George and young Fairfax traveled through the land that belonged to the latter's uncle, and at the end of that time the boy had made practically a complete survey of the region. By the middle of April he was back at Belvoir. His plans were examined and approved, and he was well paid for his services.

So pleased was the Englishman with George's work that he used his efforts to get him the appointment of Public Surveyor. The position pleased the boy, who at once started to make maps of the whole region lying along the Potomac. He divided his time between his mother's simple house, the big house which his older half-brother, Lawrence, had built at Mount Vernon, and Lord Fairfax's seat at Belvoir. The strongest friendship had grown up between the nobleman and the boy, and George unquestionably profited greatly by his talks with this man, who was very fond of literature and art, and who had known the most distinguished men and women of Europe.

Belvoir had a fine library, and George spent much of his spare time there reading with special eagerness the history of England and Addison's essays in the Spectator. His only schooling had been that which he had gained at a very primitive log schoolhouse, where an old man named Hobby, originally a bondsman, taught the children of the plantations reading, writing, and arithmetic. George, however, was not the boy to be content with such a simple education, and he had made up his mind that if he could not go to William and Mary College he would at least learn all he could from Lord Fairfax's well-stocked library.

Young Washington's work as a surveyor was shortly cut in upon by the outbreak of trouble with France. In looking over the youths of the neighborhood who were likely to make good soldiers, attention was almost at once attracted to him. Everybody knew he had a great sense of responsibility, and his feats as an athlete were equally well known.

As a small boy he had been unusually big and strong for his age, and had always delighted in any kind of contest of strength. He could outrun, outride and outbox any boy of either side the Potomac, and had proved it in many contests of skill. When he was at Hobby's school he had liked to form his mates into companies at recess time, with cane stalks for rifles and dried gourds for drums, and drill them in the manual of arms. They had fought mimic battles, and Washington always commanded one side. He had really learned a good deal of the art of war in this way, and so when men were casting about for likely young officers they naturally thought of the boy surveyor.

His brother Lawrence had sufficient influence to procure him an appointment as District Adjutant General, and had him make his headquarters at Mount Vernon, where he immediately began to drill the raw recruits of the countryside. But in the midst of these military operations Lawrence fell ill and had to make a sea voyage to the West Indies, taking his young brother George with him as company.

In the West Indies George caught smallpox, but he made a quick recovery and after a short convalescence began to enjoy the tropical life which was so entirely new to him.

Unfortunately Lawrence Washington did not grow stronger, and finally came back to Mount Vernon to die under his own roof. He was very young, very high-spirited and accomplished, and immensely popular with all Virginians. George had looked up to him as to a second father, and his loss was a tremendous blow to him. Lawrence for his part must have realized the very unusual qualities of character in his young half-brother. He left his great estate of Mount Vernon together with other property to his wife and daughter, and in case they should die then to his mother and his brother George. George was asked to take charge of the estates, and although he was still only a boy in years he showed such splendid ability and judgment in business matters that the whole care of the family interests soon fell upon his shoulders.

We have already seen how deeply this boy impressed older men with his rare judgment, and it is scarcely strange to find that he was soon after picked out by the governor of Virginia to command an expedition sent through the wilderness to treat with the Indians and French. This required physical strength and firm purpose, the courage to deal with the Indians and shrewdness to treat with the French. Washington was known to have all these qualities. His youth was the only thing against him, and that the governor was glad to overlook.

It was a rough and perilous expedition, made partly in frail canoes down the great rivers, and partly by fighting a way through the unbroken woods. Washington met the Indians whom the French had tried hard to win over to their side, and by the most skilful diplomacy induced the chiefs to send back the wampums which the French had given them as tokens of alliance. He had studied the Indian character and knew the twists and turns of their peculiar type of mind. He was frank and outspoken with them, and as a result won their confidence, so that for a great part of his journey chiefs of the Delawares, the Shawnees and other tribes traveled with him.

Besides his success with the red men, George Washington, with his surveyor's knowledge, made a careful study of the country through which he passed, the result of which study was of the greatest value in later years when he commanded an army in that region.

He picked out the place where the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers meet as an admirable site for a fort and made a report of its advantages from a military point of view. Only a year or two later French engineers proved the correctness of his judgment by settling on the spot as the site of Fort Du Quesne, which is now Pittsburg.

Successful as he had been with the Indians, Washington was scarcely less successful with the civilized French commander. This man, like those at Belvoir, recognized at once the self-command, the extreme intelligence, and the modesty of the youth who appeared before him. The old officer and the young pioneer met as equals and fought diplomatically across the table as to which nation should win the alliance of the red men. The negotiations were extremely difficult, enough to try the skill of a man grown old in diplomatic service, but Washington completed his mission successfully, and at last set out to retrace his steps home.

Now they had much more difficulty with the Indians and with the elements. Some of their guides turned traitors, and they had to watch their arms by night and day. Ceaseless vigilance had to be used, and time and again the little band had to make forced marches and change their course on the spur of the moment to throw off bands of pursuing savages. When they reached the banks of the Alleghany River they found that it was only partly frozen over and that great quantities of broken ice were driving down the channel in the middle.

Washington knew that a band of hostile Indians was at his heels, and he had to plan some way of crossing the Alleghany. He decided to build a raft, but had only one poor hatchet with which to construct it. The men set to work with this, and labored all day, but night came before the raft was finished. As soon as they could they launched it and tried to steer it across with long poles. When they reached the main channel the raft became jammed between great cakes of ice, and it seemed as if they would all be swept down-stream with it. Washington planted his pole against the bottom of the stream and pushed with all his might, in hopes of holding the raft still until the ice should have gone by. Instead the current drove the ice against his pole with such force that he was jerked into the water and only saved himself from being swept down the roaring channel by seizing one of the logs.

They found it impossible to reach shore. The best they could do was to get to an island near which the raft had drifted. Here they passed the night, exposed to extreme cold, in great danger of freezing; but in the morning the drift ice was found so tightly wedged together that they were able to cross over on it to the opposite bank of the Alleghany.

This was but one of many adventures that befell the little party on its homeward way. Through all kinds of dangers Washington led his men, and finally he had the satisfaction of bringing the expedition safely back to Williamsburg, where he gave the governor a full report of his remarkable mission. It was practically the first expedition of its kind in Virginian history, and the story of it soon spread far and wide through the Old Dominion.

Everywhere men spoke of the remarkable skill the young man had shown in dealing with fickle Indians and crafty French. Report was made of the trained eye with which the young commander had noticed the military qualities of the country and of the courage he had shown in all sorts of perils. More than that, the governor of Virginia and other men in power realized that Washington had prudence, good judgment, and resolution to a remarkable degree, and told each other that here was a man worthy to uphold the interests of the colony. From the date of this trip George Washington became a prominent figure. It was not long before he was to be the mainstay of Virginia.

Every one knows the story of Washington's life. From being the mainstay of Virginia and fighting with General Braddock against the French and Indians, he became the mainstay of the United Colonies and fought through seven long and trying years against the veterans of England. Who can overestimate the great patience and courage and determination that heroic struggle required of him?

We see him taking command of the raw recruits at Cambridge, leading his men in victory at Trenton, sustaining them in defeat at Monmouth, cheering them through the desperate winter at Valley Forge. Later we see him as first President of the United States guiding the new republic through its first troubled years, and later still as the simple gentleman of Mount Vernon, glad to escape to the peace of the river and fields he loved.

There are few figures in history quite so self-reliant as that of this "Father of his Country." The qualities which made him so remarkable a boy were the same as those which made him so great a man.

Daniel Boone

The Boy of the Frontier: 1735-1820

Many people were riding to the big red barn that belonged to a Pennsylvania farmer who lived on the outskirts of the little town of Oley in Berks County. It was a Sunday morning early in the summer of 1742, and people from all the neighborhood were heading for that barn. Almost all of them came on horseback, sometimes man and wife riding separate steeds, sometimes the woman seated behind the man, her hands grasping his coat. A few families, father, mother and a flock of children, covered the road on foot, the father with a gun usually strapped across his back. A very few people drove up in primitive carriages, something like old-fashioned English chaises. Those who drove were very proud, because such elegant carriages were rarely seen outside of Philadelphia, and betokened much social prominence.

The big doors of the red barn stood wide open, and as soon as the horses were properly tethered the country people streamed inside. Most primitive benches had been placed in rows facing a broad platform at the farther end, and men, women and children filed into the seats with all the solemnity of people entering church. As soon as they had settled themselves on the benches they all stared at the platform.

Five swarthy, red-skinned Indians stood on the raised place, and a little in front of them stood a tall, strong-featured white man. The Indians wore their native buckskin clothes, and had chains of bright beads about their necks, but their faces were as quiet and peaceful as that of the white man in front of them. One of them, he who looked the youngest, wore a single brilliant red feather in his long black hair. All the men stood there patiently until the barn was filled.

Down in front, close to the platform, sat a small boy, his eyes fixed on the young Indian who wore the scarlet feather. The boy was about eight years old. His hair was dark and rather long, his blue eyes looked from under light yellowish eyebrows, his mouth was very wide but his lips were thin and straight. He looked alert and interested.

Presently the white man on the platform, who was a widely-known Moravian missionary named Count Zinzendorf, raised his voice in prayer. The farmers, their wives, and children knelt on the floor of the barn. When the prayer was ended the Count stated that at this meeting, or synod, as he called it, they were to hear from five Delaware Indians, lately converted to Christianity. One after the other the red men stepped forward and spoke, slowly, and sometimes hesitating over long English words, but with a fine earnestness that was accented by their strong, dignified bearing and their firm, well-cut features.

The boy in front listened attentively, although he could not understand everything they said. He liked Indians, and, as long as he had to go to church, he was glad he could look at these Delawares.

The synod came to an end, and the congregation filed slowly out of the barn. Those who had ridden mounted again, and went their homeward way at the slow and decorous pace suitable to Sunday. Squire Boone, who had been sitting on the front bench with his wife Sarah, and nine of his eleven children, gathered the latter together, and guided them, much like a flock of sheep, to his log cabin home near Oley. One of them, the fourth boy, Daniel by name, had lingered behind. He had waited until the five Delawares were leaving, and then had gone up to the youngest of the Indians, and touched his hand.

The Indian looked down at the small boy, and smiled. "How?" he said encouragingly.

"Is the feather in your hair a flamingo feather?" asked the boy.

The Delaware nodded. "Yes, him flamingo."

"How did you win it?"

The young man smiled again. "Once the Delawares must have rescue from the Hurons. A chief sent me with others to take word. We must go through Iroquois country to get Hurons. Iroquois bad people, war with us. Other Delawares killed, I take word in safe. Hurons go back with me, and help my people. Chief give me flamingo feather."

Admiration shone in the boy's eyes. "I like the Delawares," said he.

"Delawares like you people," replied the Indian. "What you name?"

"Daniel Boone. Some day, when I grow up, I'll come and visit you."

"Good," said the other. He held out his hand as he was used to seeing white men do. The boy put his palm in the Indian's, and they shook hands. Then Daniel turned and scampered down the road after his father.

The boys of the Boone family had a very good time. They lived on what was then the frontier between civilization and the wilderness. They learned to hunt and fish, and to know the habits of the animals of the woods and fields. Moreover they were almost as used to seeing Indians as to seeing white people, and had none of the fear of them which kept so many of the settlers farther east continually uneasy.

The boys and girls had plenty of work to do. Squire Boone had a big farm, and kept five or six looms working in his house, making homespun clothes for his large family and to sell to his neighbors. He owned a splendid grazing range some little distance north of his home, and sent his cattle there early each spring.

Shortly after that Sunday of Count Zinzendorf's missionary meeting Daniel's mother told him that he and she were to take the cattle north to this range, and watch them during the summer. Squire Boone was needed at the farm, the older girls were to tend the loom, and the mother had chosen her favorite son to go north with her.

At the beginning of summer they drove the cows to the range, and stayed there with them until autumn. Mrs. Boone and Daniel lived in a small cabin, far from any neighbors. Near the cabin, over a spring, was a dairy-house. The sturdy woman worked here, making fine butter and cheese, while Daniel kept guard over the cattle, letting them wander over the hills and through the woods as they would, but driving them back to their pen near the cabin at sunset.

This duty of herdsman left Daniel much time to himself. He spent this time in studying woodcraft. He grew passionately fond of everything belonging to the wilderness; he knew birds and beasts, the trails through the forest and the course of streams as well as any Indian. He set traps of his own making, and brought his captures proudly home at night to his mother.

At first he had to make his own weapons, and invented a curious implement, simply a slim, smooth-shaved sapling, with a bunch of twisted roots at the end. This he learned to throw so skilfully that he could readily kill birds, rabbits, and small game with it. A little later, however, his father gave him a rifle, and he became an expert marksman, able to provide his mother with plenty of game for food.

It was a wonderful life for a boy who loved the country. All summer he herded the cattle and roamed through the almost untrodden wilderness. In the winter his father let him hunt as soon as he had learned to handle a gun. Daniel roamed far and wide across the Neversink mountain range to the north and west of Monocacy Valley. He kept his family supplied with great stock of game, and he cured the animals' skins. When he had a sufficient store of skins he set out to market them in Philadelphia.

The city William Penn had founded on the banks of the Delaware was then a small but prosperous village. It had been designed on the plan of a checker-board, and most of the houses were surrounded by well-kept gardens and flourishing orchards. Primitive as it was, the country boy looked at it with wondering admiration. The houses, which were really very simple, were palaces to him, when he thought of his father's log cabin. The men and women, dressed in the latest importations brought from London by sailing vessels, were figures of surpassing style and elegance.

Life in Philadelphia seemed very rich to Daniel Boone; he liked to loiter along the streets and look in at the wide gardens and the comfortable white porches, and he liked to stop and watch a city chaise drive by, with a man in a claret or plum-colored suit and a woman in a bright taffeta gown. They were almost a different race from the buckskin-clad people of the wilderness from whom he came.

Yet the frontier was in fact very near to Philadelphia. A few outlying fields about the town alone separated it from the wild forest; guards were ever ready to give warning of danger from Indians on the war-path, and friendly Indians were constantly met with on the streets. There were many fur-traders, too, who brought their goods to market as Daniel did, and one was constantly meeting some rough-clad trapper in from the wilds for a few days of city life.

Daniel wandered about slowly, enjoying everything he saw with a boy's delight in the unusual, and finally exchanging the skins he had brought with him for things he needed in his hunting,—long, sharp-edged knives, flints, powder and lead for his gun.

When Daniel was fourteen his older brother married a young Quakeress who had received a better education than any of her neighbors. She liked Daniel and began to teach him to read and to figure. He was not a brilliant scholar, but he learned enough to do rough surveying work, and to write letters which expressed what he meant although spelled on a plan of his own. At about the same time Squire Boone started a blacksmith shop, and Daniel added this work to what he already did as herdsman and hunter. The work in iron gave him a chance to plan and carry out new ideas of his in regard to guns and traps.

The Pennsylvania country was gradually filling up, and in 1750, when Daniel was fifteen, Squire Boone began to wonder where his eleven children would find farming land. Directly westward rose the Alleghany Mountains, a high barrier to pioneers, and report said that the Indians who lived just beyond them were particularly fierce. Southwest, however, lay alluring valleys, broad meadows between the Appalachian ranges that stretched from Pennsylvania through Virginia and the Carolinas into far-off Georgia. Men who wanted new and bigger lands went south into the Blue Ridge country, and some near neighbors of the Boones had pushed on to the Yadkin Valley which lay in northwestern North Carolina. Reports came back of the splendid lands they found there.

Squire Boone was by nature a pioneer, a man who loved to explore new lands and build new settlements, and so he decided to venture into this new and promising country. There is a world of romance in such a journey as this the Boones now undertook, and they were but one of many thousand families who were pushing west and south, laying the foundations of a great land.

Mrs. Boone and the younger children were safely stowed away in canvas-covered wagons, such as were later known as "prairie schooners," and Squire Boone with Daniel and the older boys rode horseback, driving the cattle before them, and forming an armed guard about the caravan. They crossed the ford at Harper's Ferry and went on up the rich Shenandoah Valley. At night camp was pitched by a spring and the wagons drawn up in a circle about the cattle. A camp-fire was built and the game which Daniel as huntsman had shot was cooked for supper. Sentries were posted, and all night long father and sons took turns guarding against attack from Indians.

Think what a prospect lay before the pioneers! A vast tract of the fairest and richest land in the world waiting to be claimed from the wilderness. They had only to choose and take. But the zeal for exploration led them on, over the table-land of western Virginia, through the primeval forests, up the currents of the many rivers that flow toward the Ohio, and so on to the south and west.

As they neared the Yadkin they came to a splendid stretch of land; a high prairie, with fine grass for cattle, and near at hand streams edged with cane-brake. Daniel saw such fish and game as he had never seen before, fruit to be had for the taking, and a cattle range only bounded by the distant western mountains. But as he rode into the splendid prairie he thought more of those distant blue-topped heights than of the near-by meadows; he knew that on and on westward lay a great unknown country and already he felt it call to him to be explored.

Squire Boone chose land at a place called Buffalo Lick near the Yadkin River, and built a home there. Daniel now spent little time about the farm, for he had learned the value of skins in the Atlantic cities. Buffalo were plentiful all about the settlement, and he could kill four or five deer in a day. It was in truth a hunter's paradise. In a single day he could kill enough bears to make a ton of what was called bear-bacon; there were numberless wolves, panthers, and wildcats; turkeys, beavers, otters and smaller animals ran wild all about him, and from morn till night he was out hunting in the woods.

But life was not all sport for the young Boones. Various Indian tribes, the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and the Shawnese hunted not far away, and although they were often on friendly terms with the whites, and came to the settlement to trade, sometimes they put on their war paint, and descended on the small frontier homes with full fury.

As the French came down from the north disputing this new land with the English settlers they made the Indians their allies, and the border warfare grew more bitter. Finally the English general Braddock decided to march west himself and try to teach the French and Indians a lesson.

It was not likely that such a sturdy youth as Daniel Boone could resist the desire to march against the French. The expedition promised him a chance to push farther into that wild western country, if nothing else, and so he joined Braddock's small army with about a hundred other North Carolina frontiersmen. Daniel was made chief wagoner and blacksmith.

General Braddock knew nothing of Indian warfare, and the little expedition proved an easy target for their enemies. The cumbersome and heavily laden baggage wagons were a great handicap to them. The English regulars, the frontiersmen, and the baggage train were caught in the deep ravine of Turtle Creek, a few miles away from Pittsburg, and suddenly set upon by ambushed Indians commanded by French officers. Many of the drivers, caught in the trap, were killed. Daniel, however, contrived to cut the traces of his team, and mounting one of the horses, escaped down and out of the ravine under a fire of shot and arrows.

The Indians pursued the fugitives, laying waste the borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia, but not following as far south as the Yadkin. Daniel reached home, and set to work to strengthen the settlement's ties of friendship with the two tribes of the neighborhood, the Catawbas and the Cherokees. With their aid he was able to provide sufficient safeguard against the Northern tribes.

Daniel Boone's First View of Kentucky

While he was with Braddock's army Daniel had met a man named John Finley, who fired his imagination with stories of his wanderings in the west. He was a fur-trader, and his passion for hunting had already led him into the Kentucky wilderness as far as the Falls of the Ohio River, where Louisville now stands. He had had countless adventures with Indians, with wild animals, and with the perils of stream and forest. Young Boone drank in the stories eagerly, and resolved that some day he would himself go out to explore the west.

Daniel had now come to manhood. For a time he stayed in the Yadkin Valley, but the call to follow the trail of the buffaloes and the westward moving Shawnese was clear in his ears. Dangerous days of Indian fighting on the border held him close at home, but the time came when he could resist the call no longer. He left home and took his way through the uncharted hills and forests to Kentucky.