Although for several decades the Virginia traders had been
passing over the Great Trading Path to the towns of the Cherokees
and the Catawbas, it was not until the early years of the
eighteenth century that Virginians of imaginative vision directed
their eyes to the westward, intent upon crossing the mountains
and locating settlements as a firm barrier against the
imperialistic designs of France. Acting upon his oft-expressed
conviction that once the English settlers had established
themselves at the source of the James River "it would not be in
the power of the French to dislodge them," Governor Alexander
Spotswood in 1716, animated with the spirit of the pioneer, led
an expedition of fifty men and a train of pack-horses to the
mountains, arduously ascended to the summit of the Blue Ridge,
and claimed the country by right of discovery in behalf of his
sovereign. In the journal of John Fontaine this vivacious account
is given of the historic episode: "I graved my name on a tree by
the river side; and the Governor buried a bottle with a paper
enclosed on which he writ that he took possession of this place
in the name and for King George the First of England. We had a
good dinner, and after it we got the men together and loaded all
their arms and we drank the King's health in Burgundy and fired a
volley, and all the rest of the Royal Family in claret and a
volley. We drank the Governor's health and fired another volley."

By this jovial picnic, which the governor afterward commemorated
by presenting to each of the gentlemen who accompanied him a
golden horseshoe, inscribed with the legend, Sic juvat
transcendere montes, Alexander Spotswood anticipated by a third