ic, and
pallid forms' warp scientific judgment. And, friends, it's nature's
work, these inconceivable structures hidden from the world for millions
of years down under the ground."

He turned with a beaming countenance when we had emerged from the cavern
of matchless wonders. "Young Americans don't have to study geography
books these days. All they have to do is get a second-hand car, fill it
up, and strike out on the Park-to-Park Highway. They'll get an eyeful
and an earful too from native sons, and learn more about America than
they can dig out of the dry pages of a book in a year. Why, right down
there at Charlottesville there's Ash Lawn where James Monroe lived and
meditated. His friend, Thomas Jefferson, set about building the place in
1798 while Monroe was in France looking after Uncle Sam's business. Even
great and busy men in those days were neighborly. Thomas Jefferson did a
good part by his neighbor James Monroe when he built that house, and the
ambassador thanked him generously when he came back to occupy the place.
The two used to roam the grounds together and spent many happy hours
there. They visited to and fro; you see Monroe lived across yonder
within sight of his friend's home. The great of the past take on reality
when you actually set foot upon the ground they have trod. Places come
to life when we see them with our own eyes. That's the purpose of these
great highways, the Park-to-Park highways that connect the scenes of
American history."

As the terrain changes there is a great variety in the scenes along
Skyline Drive. Sometimes the road leaves the crest to tunnel through a
rocky flank of mountain and you come unexpectedly upon sparkling streams
tumbling down the mountain side to the valley below. The eye follows the
cascade to the very edge of the drive. It disappears beneath the wide
surface and reappears beyond a rocky wall, cascading down and down to
fertile valleys below.

Virginians, and people of the Blue Ridge generally, count one of their
greatest prides the restoration of the capital at Williamsburg through
the generosity of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Old and young who pass
through the graceful wrought-iron gates to the Governor's Palace thrill
at the sight of the restored colonial capital named for King William
III, a scene which all in all reflects old England in miniature, "as the
state of mind of its citizens reflected the grandeur that was to be
America." Here are the stocks in whic