They were not pioneers, of course, in the usual sense. There were no covered wagons, no endless plains and empty prairies, no hostile natives (except for the occasional glowering concierge). Instead, McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Truman" and "John Adams," has given a new twist to the idea of blazing a trail and has taken for his subject a version of that oldest and richest of literary dramas, as ancient at least as Homer and Odysseus: Someone Goes on a Great Journey. And he has given it a distinctively American form -- The New World Meets the Old.

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The first is the image of a gallows. It appears early in the narrative, when Colonel George Washington of the Virginia Militia, seeking to terrify his untutored, undisciplined, ragamuffin soldiers into obedience, builds a 40-foot-high gibbet. Soon after, he sentences 14 of his men to death for desertion and insubordination. Though he will eventually spare 12 from the noose, he will still punish them with absolutely fierce and shocking floggings, an average of 600 lashes per prisoner. "Washington made a point of hanging people in public," Ron Chernow writes, "to deter others." It is an expression of "his blazing temper." It is also a result of his experience as explorer and soldier in the Virginia wilderness, "which darkened his view of human nature." His lifelong practice will be to see "people as motivated more by force than kindness." When he hangs his first man, the year is 1756, Virginia is still a British colony, and Washington is 24 years old.

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