"Bidding adieu to those who had received us so kindly, we re-embarked and hoisted our colors, and being provided with a piece of canon and suitable ammunition, we fired a salute, awakening the echoes that had slept for ages around the hallowed spot; and while the smoke of our martial tribute to the birth-place of the _Pater Patriæ_ still lingered on the bosom of the Potomac, we spread our sails to a favoring breeze, and sped joyously to our homes."
Mr. Paulding, in his life of Washington, describes the place as follows:
"A few scanty relics alone remain to mark the spot, which will ever be sacred in the eyes of posterity. A clump of old decayed fig trees, probably coeval with the mansion, yet exists; and a number of vines and shrubs and flowers still reproduce themselves every year, as if to mark its site, and flourish among the hallowed ruins. The spot is of the deepest interest, not only from its associations, but its natural beauties. It commands a view of the Maryland shore of the Potomac, one of the most majestic of rivers and of its course for many miles towards the Chesapeake Bay. An aged gentlemen, still living in the neighborhood, remembers the house in which Washington was born. It was a low-pitched, single-storied frame building, with four rooms on the first floor, and an enormous chimney at each end on the outside. This was the style of the better sort of houses in those days, and they are still occasionally seen in the old settlements of Virginia."
Irving says that "the roof was steep, and sloped down into low, projecting eaves;" so that an artist's eye can readily see the house as it was.
Let the reader bear in mind that John Washington was the founder of the Washington family in America, and George Washington was his great-grandson.
George was baptized on the 5th of April following, when he was about six weeks old. Mrs. Mildred Gregory acted as godmother, and Mr. Beverly Whiting and Captain Christopher Brooks, godfathers.
When George was four or five years old, his father resolved to move to a plantation on the banks of the Rappahannock River, opposite Fredericksburg.
"There are many advantages in that locality," he remarked to his wife; "besides, the land is better."