the landlord did not get simple interest on his investments. Thus, in 1799
he complains of slow payments from tenants in Washington and Lafayette
Counties (Pennsylvania). Instead of an expected six thousand dollars, due
June 1, but seventeen hundred dollars were received.

Income, however, had not been his object in loading himself with such a
vast property, as Washington believed that he was certain to become
rich. "For proof of" the rise of land, he wrote in 1767, "only look to
Frederick, [county] and see what fortunes were made by the ... first
taking up of those lands. Nay, how the greatest estates we have in this
colony were made. Was it not by taking up and purchasing at very low rates
the rich back lands, which were thought nothing of in those days, but are
now the most valuable land we possess?"

In this he was correct, but in the mean time he was more or less
land-poor. To a friend in 1763 he wrote that the stocking and repairing of
his plantations "and other matters ... swallowed up before I well knew
where I was, all the moneys I got by marriage, nay more, brought me in
debt" In 1775, replying to a request for a loan, he declared that "so far
am I from having £200 to lend ... I would gladly borrow that sum myself
for a few months." When offered land adjoining Mount Vernon for three
thousand pounds in 1778, he could only reply that it was "a sum I have
little chance, if I had inclination, to pay; & therefore would not engage
it, as I am resolved not to incumber myself with Debt." In 1782, to secure
a much desired tract he was forced to borrow two thousand pounds York
currency at the rate of seven per cent.

In 1788, "the total loss of my crop last year by the drought" "with
necessary demands for cash" "have caused me much perplexity and given me
more uneasiness than I ever experienced before from want of money," and a