Across the shimmering distances they saw the gray
Alleghanies, fresh barrier to a fresh west. Below them ran a clear river,
afterwards to be called the Shenandoah. They gazed -- they predicted
colonists, future plantations, future towns, for that great valley, large
indeed as are some Old World kingdoms. They drank the health of England's
King, and named two outstanding peaks Mount George and Mount Alexander;
then, because their senses were ravished by the Eden before them, they
dubbed the river Euphrates. They plunged and scrambled down the mountain
side to the Euphrates, drank of it, bathed in it, rested, ate, and drank
again. The deep green woods were around them; above them they could see the
hawk, the eagle, and the buzzard, and at their feet the bright fish of the
river.
At last they reclimbed the Blue Ridge, descended its eastern face, and,
leaving the great wave of it behind them, rode homeward to Williamsburg in
triumph.
We are thus, with Spotswood and his band, on the threshold of expanding
American vistas. This Valley of Virginia, first a distant Beulah land for
the eye of the imagination only, presently became a land of pioneer cabins,
far apart -- very far apart -- then a settled land, of farms, hamlets, and
market towns. Nor did the folk come only from that elder Virginia of tidal
waters and much tobacco, of "compleat gentlemen" at the capital, and of
many slaves in the fields. But downward from the Potomac, they came south
into this valley, from Pennsylvania and Maryland, many of them Ulster Scots
who had sailed to the western world.
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