VIRGINIA 31 



river and the Leesburg region had a good and fertile 

 look, containing a strong proportion of red, iron-bear- 

 ing clay, at times appearing by itself in hardened frag- 

 ments, which from the deep color might be taken for 

 blood-stone. Nearer towards Leesburg traces of lime- 

 stone were less frequent, and a red sand-stone was to be 

 seen. The chain of hills, to our left beyond the Potow- 

 mack, grew continually lower; we approached nearer 

 to this ridge 6 miles from Leesburg where it shows a 

 white, fine-grained, quartzose rock (Grindstone). In 

 this region we crossed Goose Creek, at this season 

 pretty wide, deep, and rapid. From several circum- 

 stances it appeared to me afterwards that going in a 

 southeasterly direction we had, without knowing it, 

 quite crossed the chain of hills, (now become still 

 lower) , which as far as this marked the southern limit 

 of the Fredericktown limestone valley; for farther on 

 neither species of rock was to be seen, and we had to 

 go many miles through the common red clay, at that 

 time wet and viscous, a tedious and vexatious road. 



Along this road it was matter of no little astonishment 

 to see so much waste or new-cleared land, having just 

 come from the very well settled and cultivated regions 

 of Pensylvania and Maryland. The reason does not 

 lie in any worse quality of the land, which is scarcely 

 inferior to that beyond the Potowmack, but in the fact 

 that individuals own great and extensive tracts of land, 

 of which they will sell none, so as to leave their families 

 the more. All of them are very much disposed to let 

 land in parcels, they retaining possession and seeing 

 their land as much as possible worked and settled by 

 tenants ; but tenants are not easily to be had, so long as 

 it is anywhere possible to buy land. This policy, which 



