The things we do!

He had talked menacingly of the French who held the valley
beyond, had encouraged the extension of English settlements to break the
line of French possessions, and had formed a short-lived Virginia-Indian
company to protect the frontier against French and Indian incursions. This
expedition was a visible challenge. With his merry company he buried a
record of his "farthest west" journey in one of the bottles emptied en
route and then went back to tidewater. That was the end of his adventure;
little or nothing came of his "flourish" except the extension of the
Virginia frontier to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Only traders and trappers
ventured farther or even so far during the next three or four decades, and
they were a "set of abandoned wretches," or so a later governor
characterized them, though Parkman mentions some exceptions, and I wish to
believe there were more, since one of them, I find, carried my own name
far into that country on his trading and hunting expeditions among and
with the Indians.


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