he forest areas. In fact, the
Piedmont was by no means the unbroken forest that might have been
imagined, for in addition to natural meadows, the Indians had burned
over large tracts.[89:2] It was a rare combination of woodland and
pasture, with clear running streams and mild climate.[89:3]

The occupation of the Virginia Piedmont received a special impetus from
the interest which Governor Spotswood took in the frontier. In 1710 he
proposed a plan for intercepting the French in their occupation of the
interior, by inducing Virginia settlement to proceed along one side of
James River only, until this column of advancing pioneers should strike
the attenuated line of French posts in the center. In the same year he
sent a body of horsemen to the top of the Blue Ridge, where they could
overlook the Valley of Virginia.[90:1] By 1714 he became active as a
colonizer himself. Thirty miles above the falls of the Rappahannock, on
the Rapidan at Germanna,[90:2] he settled a little village of German
redemptioners (who in return for having the passage paid agreed to serve
without wages for a term of years), to engage in his iron works, also to
act as rangers on the frontier. From here, in 1716, with two companies
of rangers and four Indians, Governor Spotswood and a band of Virginia
gentlemen made a summer picnic excursion of two weeks across the Blue
Ridge into the Shenandoah Valley. _Sic juvat transcendere montes_ was
the motto of these Knights of the Golden Horse Shoe, as the governor
dubbed them. But they were not the "warlike christian men" destined to
occupy the frontier.

Spotswood's interest in the advance along the Rappahannock, probably
accounts for the fact that in 1720 Spotsylvania and Brunswick were
organized as frontier counties of Virginia.[91:1] Five hundred dollars
were contributed by the colony to the church, and a thousand dollars for
arms and ammunition for the settlers in these counties. The fears of the
French and Indians beyond the high mountains, were alleged as reasons
for this advance. To attract settlers to these new counties, they were
(1723) exempt from purchasing the lands under the system of head rights,
and from payment of quit-rents for seven years after 1721. The free
grants so obtained were not to exceed a thousand acres. This was soon
extended to six thousand acres, but with provision requiring the
settlement of a certain number of families upon the grant within a
certain time. In 1729 Spotswood w