Washington divided his flour into superfine, fine, middlings and ship stuff.  It was put into barrels manufactured by the plantation coopers and much of it ultimately found its way to the West India market.  A tradition—­much quoted—­has it that barrels marked “George Washington, Mount Vernon,” were accepted in the islands without any inspection, but Mr. J.M.  Toner, one of the closest students of Washington’s career, contended that this was a mistake and pointed to the fact that the Virginia law provided for the inspection of all flour before it was exported and the placing of a brand on each barrel.  However this may be, we have Washington’s own word for it, that his flour was as good in quality as any manufactured in America—­and he was no boaster.

[ILLUSTRATION:  Dogue Run below the Site of the Mill]

[ILLUSTRATION:  On the Road to the Mill and Pohick Church]

That his flour was so good was in large measure due to the excellent quality of the wheat from which it was made.  By careful attention to his seed and to cultivation he succeeded in raising grain that often weighed upward of sixty pounds to the bushel.  After the Revolution he wrote:  “No wheat that has ever yet fallen under my observation exceeds the wheat which some years ago I cultivated extensively.”

His idea of good cultivation in these years was to let his fields lie fallow at certain intervals, though he also made use of manure, marl, etc., and in 1772 tried the experiment of sowing two bushels of salt per acre upon fallow ground, dividing the plot up into strips eight feet in width and sowing the alternate strips in order that he might be able to determine results.

He imported from England an improved Rotheran or patent plow, and, having noticed in an agricultural work mention of a machine capable of pulling up two or three hundred stumps per day, he expressed a desire for one, saying:  “If the accounts are not greatly exaggerated, such powerful assistance must be of vast utility in many parts of this wooden country, where it is impossible for our force (and laborers are not to be hired here), between the finishing of one crop and preparations for another, to clear ground fast enough to afford the proper changes, either in the planting or farming business.”

These were his golden days.  He was not so rich as he was later nor so famous, but he was strong and well and young, he had abundant friends, and his neighbors thought well enough of him to send him to the Burgesses and to make him a vestryman of old Pohick Church; if he felt the need of recreation he went fishing or fox-hunting or attended a horse race or played a game of cards with his friends, and he had few things to trouble him seriously.  But fussy kings and ministers overseas were meddling with the liberties of subjects and were creating a situation out of which was to come a mighty burden—­a burden so Atalantean that it would have frightened most men, but one that he was brave enough and strong enough to shoulder and with it march down to immortality.