Excerpt from Stories of the Old Dominion: From the Settlement to the End of the Revolution Instead of passing his time in idleness with other young men in the town of Willoughby, he went out to the woods near, and built a sott of house for himself of the boughs of trees. In this he intended to live, and as to supporting himself, -he meant to shoot deer and live on the venison. He then got together as many books as he could on war like matters, and retiring to his Bower, as he called it, set about studying them. By this means he taught him self the art of war; but as he knew that a soldier must fight with his own hands, be resolved also to learn how to use every sort of weapon. At that time men fought on horseback often, and one of the most important of their weapons was the lance. This was a long wooden affair with a sharp iron point, and soldiers held the head straight in front of them, to strike their enemies as they rode against them at full gallop. Young John Smith had a horse and lance, and he now practised to make himself skilful. This he did by Suspending a ring to the bough of a tree, after which he went off to some distance and rode at it at full gallop, pointing his lance at the ring, in order to carry it off from the bough. By repeating this over and over, he at last became expert in it, and then he knew he could strike an enemy on horseback. He also practised with his sword to make his eye keen and his wrist tough, and fired at the trees with his pistol to be come an expert marksman. By this means he grew to be a skilful soldier; and then he set out in search of advent ui'cs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.