the party was alarmed by a report that the Indians had killed two white
men, but they breathed easier on learning that the sole basis of the
story was that a trader had tried to swim his horse across the Ohio and
had been drowned. In spite of uncertainties, the voyagers continued to
the Great Kanawha and paddled about fourteen miles up that stream. Near
its mouth Washington located two large tracts for himself and military
comrades and after interesting hunting experiences and inspecting some
enormous sycamores--concerning which matters more hereafter--the party
turned back, and Washington reached home after an absence of nine weeks.

Two of Washington's western tracts are of special interest. One had been
selected by Crawford in 1767 and was "a fine piece of land on a stream
called Chartiers Creek" in the present Washington County, southwest of
Pittsburgh. Crawford surveyed the tract and marked it by blazed trees,
built four cabins and cleared a patch of ground, as an improvement,
about each. Later Washington, casting round for some one from whom to
obtain a military title with which to cover the tract, bought out the
claim of his financially embarrassed old neighbor Captain John Posey to
three thousand acres, paying £11.11.3, or about two cents per acre.
Crawford, now a deputy surveyor of the region, soon after resurveyed two
thousand eight hundred thirteen acres and forwarded the "return" to
Washington, with the result that in 1774 Governor Dunmore of Virginia
granted a patent for the land.

In the meantime, however, six squatters built a cabin upon the tract and
cleared two or three acres, but Crawford paid them five pounds for their
improvements and induced them to move on. To keep off other interlopers
he placed a man on the land, but in 1773 a party of rambunctious
Scotch-Irishmen appeared on the scene, drove the keeper away, built a
cabin so close in front of his door that he could not get back in, and