a mysterious word of unknown
content, for no Virginian of that day had gone beyond. All the way from
Canada into South Carolina and the Florida of that time stretched the
mighty system of the Appalachians, fifteen hundred miles in length and
three hundred in breadth. Here was a barrier long and thick, with
ridge after ridge of lifted and forested earth, with knife-blade
vales between, and only here and there a break away and an encompassed
treasure of broad and fertile valley. The Appalachians made a true
Chinese Wall, shutting all England-in-America, in those early days, out
from the vast inland plateau of the continent, keeping upon the seaboard
all England-in-America, from the north to the south. To Virginia these
were the mysterious mountains just beyond which, at first, were held
to be the South Sea and Cathay. Now, men's knowledge being larger by a
hundred years, it was known that the South Sea could not be so near.
The French from Canada, going by way of the St. Lawrence and the Great
Lakes, had penetrated very far beyond and had found not the South Sea
but a mighty river flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. What was the real
nature of this world which had been found to lie over the mountains?
More and more Virginians were inclined to find out, foreseeing that they
would need room for their growing population. Continuously came in folk
from the Old Country, and continuously Virginians were born. Maryland
dwelt to the north, Carolina to the south. Virginia, seeking space, must
begin to grow westward.

There were settlements from the sea to the Falls of the James, and
upon the York, the Rappahannock, and the Potomac. Beyond these, in the
wilderness, might be found a few lonely cabins, a scattered handful of
pioneer folk, small blockhouses, and small companies of rangers charged
with protecting all from Indian foray. All this country was rolling and
hilly, but beyond it stood the mountains, a wall of enchantment, against
the west.

Alexander Spotswood, hardy Scot, endowed with a good temperamental blend
of the imaginative and the active, was just the man, the time being
ripe, to encounter and surmount that wall. Fortunately, too, the
Virginians were horsemen, man and horse one piece almost, New World
centaurs. They would follow the bridle-tracks that pierced to the hilly
country, and beyond that they might yet make way through the primeval
forest. They would encounter dangers, but hardly the old perils of
seacoast and