Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/125

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of despatches to and from the expedition, and who then first saw the younger soldier. A court-house was building, by the way, but, by fair means or foul, Braddock, whose angry bluster and loud oaths we can yet almost hear, aided by the wily Franklin, impressed so many hundreds of horses, wagons, teamsters and servants that the work was delayed for some years after the testy General, in his coach-and-six, drove off over the mountain on May-day morning. He left a memorial on Catoctin,—a walled-in spring of icy water, covered by a great flat rock, under whose shelter tiny ferns and silvery-green mosses love to grow.

There was a road to Baltimore and to Annapolis as early as 1760, and a curiously large commerce with the Saltzburgers who had settled in Georgia. The town flourished apace, and, besides the Palatines, some Scotch-Irish and many English began to arrive. The gentry had not been slow in obtaining patents to the fertile lands. In 1723 the Carrolls received the splendid manor of Carrollton, ten thousand acres in extent. Daniel Dulany had eight thousand acres, and the last Lord Baltimore nearly twice as much, while other gentlemen had estates of immense value. With