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.