ALBEMARLE IN REVOLUTIONARY DAYS 
271 
Without Jefferson’s original action we might well have been 
without a foothold on the Pacific today. 
Remember that he was also foremost, if not first, in formu- 
lating plans and methods whereby the ])ublic lands should not 
lie wild and fallow, but serve their purj)ose of developing the 
nation’s power b}' passing S3^stematically and easily into the 
hands of the settler and farmer, which has proved the basis of 
our phenomenal growth and prosi)erit}\ 
While we pay tribute to Jefferson as an individual, as a citi- 
zen, as a lover of libertv, and as a President, let us not forget his 
special claim to recognition as one of the greatest of American 
geographers. 
ALBEMARLE IN REVOLUTIONARY DAYS 
By Dr G. Broavn Goode, 
Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in Charge of the U. S. 
National Museum 
The ke}’' to the historv of Virginia in colonial and revolutionary 
days is to be found in the study of its rivers. So numerous are 
these and so wide that in their lower ]>ortions they can be crossed 
onlv in boats, and so far do they extend into the interior that in 
early days the lines of travel were almost entirel\^ along their 
courses. 
The region of the mountains was reached by roads -which were 
])arallel to the rivers, and the currents of western migration 
])assed through “gaps ” or passes in the Blue Ridge which were 
traversed by the streams which form the headwaters. 
Between the principal rivers are peninsulas which stretch forth 
toward the sea like the fingers of a great hand : Accomac, or the 
‘‘ Eastern Shore,” between the Delaware and the Sus<[uehanna ; 
the Maryland peninsula, between the Susfiuehanna and the 
Potomac; the Northern Neck, the domain of Lord Fairfax, be- 
tween the Potomac and the Ra[)pahannock ; the Gloucester 
])eninsula, between the Rappahannock and the York; the York- 
town peninsula, between the York and th(^ Potomac, and South- 
side Virginia, l»etween the James and the Dan-Roanoke. The 
Shenandoah valle\’, I>ounded hv mountains rather than river 
courses, was similarly isolated, though \)y different means. Each 
of these had a history of its own, to a certain extent distinct and 
