This is a history of doings, not of thoughts, or I would have much to
tell of what I saw during those months, when, lean as a bone, and brown
as a hazelnut, I tracked the course of the great rivers. The roads were
rough, where roads there were, but the land smiled under the sun, and
the Virginians, high and low, kept open house for the chance traveller.
One night I would eat pork and hominy with a rough fellow who was
carving a farm out of the forest; and the next I would sit in a fine
panelled hall and listen to gentlefolks' speech, and dine off damask
and silver. I could not tire of the green forests, or the marshes alive
with wild fowl, or the noble orchards and gardens, or even the salty
dunes of the Chesapeake shore. My one complaint was that the land was
desperate flat to a hill-bred soul like mine. But one evening, away
north in Stafford county, I cast my eyes to the west, and saw, blue and
sharp against the sunset, a great line of mountains. It was all I
sought. Somewhere in the west Virginia had her high lands, and one day,
I promised myself, I would ride the road of the sun and find their
secret.
In these months my thoughts were chiefly of trade, and I saw enough to
prove the truth of what the man Frew had told me.
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