low and two in the attic, with great chimneys smoking at either end, seemed to speak of other fond and happy hearts.
The valley of Virginia extends from the Potomac to the Carolina line. The Blue Ridge bounds it on one side, the Kittatinnys on the other, and in the trough-like valley between flows the historic Shenandoah.
From the north, by Winchester, scene of many a border fray and destined for action more heroic yet, Clark sped on his way to Fincastle. Some changes had taken place since that eventful morning when Governor Spotswood looked over the Blue Ridge. A dozen miles from Winchester stood Lord Fairfax's Greenway Court, overshadowed by ancient locusts, slowly mouldering to its fall. Here George Washington came in his boyhood, surveying for the gaunt, raw-boned, near-sighted old nobleman who led him hard chases at the fox hunt.
From the head spring of the Rappahannock to the head spring of the Potomac, twenty-one counties of old Virginia once belonged to the Fairfax manor, now broken and subdivided into a thousand homes. Hither had come tides of Quakers, and Scotch-Presbyterians, penetrating farther and farther its green recesses, cutting up the fruitful acres into colonial plantations.
"The Shenandoah, it is the very centre of the United States," said the emigrants.
The valley was said to be greener than any other, its waters were more transparent, its soil more fruitful. At any rate German-Pennsylvanians pushed up here, rearing barns as big as fortresses, flanked round with haystacks and granaries. Now and then Clark met them, in loose leather galligaskins and pointed hats, sunning in wide porches, smoking pipes three feet long, while their stout little children tumbled among the white clover.
Here and there negroes were whistling with notes as clear as a fife, and huge Conestoga waggons loaded with produce rumbled along to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond. Every year thousands of waggons went to market, camping at night and making the morning ring with Robin Hood songs and jingling bells.
Yonder lived Patrick Henry in his last years, at picturesque
