Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/48

30 Once more, at the close of the fifty-second year of his age, Washington was permitted to resume his favorite occupations of a farmer and planter, and to devote himself personally to his crops and cattle. Indeed, throughout his whole military campaign, he had kept himself informed of what was going on in the way of agriculture at Mount Vernon, and had given careful directions as to the cultivation of his lands. His correspondence now engrossed not a little of his time, and he was frequently cheered by the visits of his friends. Lafayette was among his most welcome guests, and passed a fortnight with him, to his great delight. Afterward Washington made a visit to his lands on the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, travelling on horseback, with his friend and physician, Dr. Craik, nearly seven hundred miles, through a wild, mountainous country, and devising schemes of internal navigation for the advantage of Virginia and Maryland. His passion for hunting, also, was revived, and Lafayette and others of the French officers sent him out fine hounds from their kennels.

But the condition of his country was never absent from his thoughts, and the insufficiency of the existing confederation weighed heavily on his mind. In one of his letters he writes: "The confederation appears to me little more than a shadow without the substance, and congress a migratory body." In another letter he says: "I have ever