214 TRAVELS THROUGH NORTH AMERICA : 
mountain,, and about fifteen south of Fluvanna 
River. It was only begun about the year 1790, 
yet it already contains sixty houses, and is most 
rapidly increasing. The improvement of the 
adjacent country has likewise been very rapids 
and land now bears nearly the same price that 
it does in the neighbourhood of York and Lari- 
Caster, in Pennsylvania. The inhabitants con¬ 
sist principally of Germans, who have extend¬ 
ed their settlements from Pennsylvania along 
the whole of that rich track of land which runs 
through the upper part of Maryland, and from 
thence behind the Blue Mountains to the most 
southern parts of Virginia. These people, as 
I before mentioned, keep very much together, 
and are never to be found but w here the land is 
remarkably good. It is singular, that although 
they form three fourths of the inhabitants on 
the western side of the Blue Ridge, yet not 
one of them is to be met with on the eastern 
side, notwithstanding that land is to be purchas¬ 
ed in the neighbourhood of the South-west 
Mountains for one fourth of w hat is paid for it 
in Bottetourt County. They have many 
times, I am told, crossed the Blue Ridge to 
examine the land, but the red soil which they 
found there was different from what they had 
been accustomed to, and the injury it was ex¬ 
posed to from the mountain torrents, always 
appeared to them an insuperable objection to 
