Virginia* 



Leesburg is the first Virginia town on this road, a 

 place of few and insignificant wooden houses. From its 

 high, pleasant, and healthful situation the proposal has 

 been made to establish a Latin school here, and on the 

 door of the tavern there was a special notice recom- 

 mending the institution to the public which should 

 certainly give it support, there being everywhere in 

 America, outside the chief cities, a lack of suitable 

 schools and educational establishments. It is not al- 

 ways the custom to hang shields before taverns, but 

 they are easily to be identified by the great number of 

 miscellaneous papers and advertisements with which 

 the walls and doors of these publick houses are plais- 

 tered ; generally, the more of such bills are to be seen 

 on a house, the better it will be found to be. In this 

 way the traveller is afforded a many-sided entertain- 

 ment, and can inform himself as to where the taxes 

 are heavy, where wives have run away, horses been 

 stolen, or the new Doctor has settled. 



From the Potowmack to Leesburg (12 miles) and a 

 few miles farther, the surface is still limestone con- 

 tinued from the valley beyond the river, not reckoning 

 the broad flat of the old and present channel. The 

 limestone, where it comes to the surface on this side in 

 Virginia, is the same grey simplex often mentioned 

 above. Small, and very large, fragments of breccia 

 were to be seen, composed of rounded pebbles and 

 sand, bound together with lime. The soil between the 





