SPOTTSWOOD'S EXPEDITION OF 1716 
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tell that these processes wrought in the past (the long past whose 
hours are as millions of years) so persistently that they moved 
a mountain range and lined an ocean-side. The soil, too, tells 
of conquest over savages and beasts, of the blossoming of the 
wilderness at human behest, of the flowering of culture and the 
ripening of intellect, over all the fair and fertile plain wrought 
during the ages ; but this story of man’s dominion is writ clearer 
in the leaves of books than in the furrows of the fields. 
SPOTTSWOOD’S EXPEDITION OF 1716 
By Dr William M. Thornton, 
Chairman of the Faculty of the University of Virginia 
Nearly 180 years ago there was formed in the Old Dominion 
a prototype of the National Geographic Society. The governor 
of the colony, Alexander Spottswood — trained in Marlborough’s 
legions and bearing honoraide scars from Blenheim — was its 
head. Robert Beverly, the historian of Virginia ; .John Fontaine, 
the chronicler of their exploration, with Todd and Robinson and 
Taylor and Brooke and Mason, and other names famous in Vir- 
ginian annals, were on the roll. The fortunate preservation of 
Fontaine’s Journal, and its publication* in the Rev. Philip 
Slaughter’s “ History of St. Mark’s Parish,” makes it eas}'’ to 
attempt a reproduction of the story of this historic ride. 
Ten of these Virginian gentlemen, with four Indian guides and 
two small companies of rangers, assembled on August 26, 1716, 
at Germanna, on the banks of the Rappahannock, and set out 
thence to explore the passes of what they called the “ highest 
ridge of mountains.” “ For this exjiedition,” says tlie Rev Hugh 
Jones, chaplain of the House of Burgesses, “ they were obliged 
to provide a great quantity of horseshoes, things seldom used in 
the eastern part of Virginia, where there are no stones, upon 
which account the governor, upon his return, presented each of 
his companions with a golden horseshoe, with the inscription on 
one side — Sicjuvat tatmcendere montes.^^ Such was the badge of 
this early society of explorers, now called in Virginian stoiy the 
“ Knights of the Golden 1 lorseslnx;.” 
One of these little golden memorials of that far-off time would 
* Duo aoknowloilgment Ih rnnilorod to tliifi vuluultio monogriip)i. 
