ry,
which it still retains.

They were also men of industry and enterprise. Hunting, which too
frequently occupies the time, of those who make the forest their
dwelling place, and abstracts the attention from more important
pursuits, was to them a recreation--not the business of life. To
improve their condition, by converting the woods into fertile plains,
and the wilderness into productive meadows, was their chief object. In
the attainment of this, they were eminently successful. Their
individual circumstances became prosperous, and the country
flourishing.

The habits and manners of the primeval inhabitants of any country,
generally give to it a distinctive character, which marks it through
after ages. Notwithstanding the influx of strangers, bringing with
them prejudices and prepossessions, at variance with those of the
community in which they come; [46] yet such is the influence of
example, and such the facility with which the mind imbibes the
feelings and sentiments of those with whom it associates, that former
habits are gradually lost and those which prevail in society,
imperceptibly adopted by its new members.

In like manner, the moral and religious habits of those who
accompanied Burden to Virginia, were impressed on the country which
they settled, and entailed on it that high character for industry,
morality and piety, which it still possesses, in an eminent degree.

At the time of the establishment of this settlement, all that part of
Virginia lying west of the Blue ridge mountains, was included in the
county of Orange. At the fall session, of the colonial legislature, in
1738, the counties of Frederick and Augusta were formed out of
Orange--The country included within the boundaries of the Potomac
river, on the north, the Blue ridge, on the east, and a line, to be
run from the head spring of Hedgman, to the head spring of Potomac, on
the south and west, to be the county of Frederick; the remainder of
the state west of the Blue ridge, to the utmost limits of Virginia to
constitute Augusta. Within its limits were included, not only a
considerable portion of Virginia as she now is, but an extent of
territory out of which has been already carved four states, possessing
great natural advantages, and the extreme fertility of whose soil,
will enable them to support perhaps a more dense population, than any
other portion of North America of equal dimensions. As the settlements
were extended, subdivisions were