The surviving conquerors gathered together the bodies of their slain tribesmen and over them toiled to erect the mounds that still stand. The mounds and many hundred acres of surrounding land were early acquired by the Mead family, who later built nearby Greenway, and in that family the legend was handed down that in the springtime of each year, about the anniversary of the battle, there came through the forest a band of Indians who, when they reached the mounds, conducted weird mourning rites for their fallen brethren, made offerings of arrows and food and then disappeared in the surrounding woods as silently as they came. As the years passed, the mourners grew fewer and fewer until at length but a solitary old warrior arrived and held what proved to be the final ceremony. But the story does not end with those last solitary rites. According to the Mead family tradition, year after year, as the night fell on the anniversary of the battle, weird sounds of conflict came from the Indian mounds though no person or living thing could be seen.
Perhaps of equal antiquity and second only to the Carolina Road in early importance but in that respect now by far surpassing it, is the highway roughly paralleling the Potomac, the old Ridge Road now generally known as the Alexandria Pike. This road also originated in an Indian trail, possibly following an earlier buffalo path; it joined the famous Potomac Path of Tidewater above the ford at Hunting Creek and it was along its course that we have seen Giles Vandercastel and Burr Harrison, in 1699, exploring their way on their mission to Conoy Island. This was the main entrance from the lower part of the Northern Neck to at least so much of Loudoun as lies between the Potomac and the Catoctin Hills; and along its course and that of the Colchester Road to the south came the majority of the Tidewater settlers. Its route through what later was to be the Town of Leesburg is marked by Loudoun Street. The late Charles O. Vandevanter of Leesburg, who made a careful study of the location of these old roads, believed that originally its course west of Leesburg followed what is now known as the Dry Mill Road to Clark's Gap; but there is reason to believe that he was mistaken. As the road approaches the rise of the Catoctin Hills, it certainly at one time followed the hollow to the west of the present established road and upon the land later owned by the author; so running west of the present Roxbury Hall and on to Clark's Gap, marks of its old route being still plainly discernible. When the highway was incorporated in 1831, its route at this point was changed to approximately its present location to avoid the sharpness of the grade as it left the little branch now crossed by stone culverts. Remains of the old road were discovered in 1923 when building the private road to the house last named. At the foot of the hill and in front of the present tenant house, rough piking was uncovered and nearby, where the path leaves the lane to go to the barn, some old brick were dug up. The late Samuel Norris, who died in 1933 at the age of eighty-four, said that at this point there once was a cottage where, as he had heard when a boy from older people, there had lived a man whose duty it was to care for the extra horses which were attached to the stage coaches before they began the abrupt rise of the road at that point in following the hollow northwesterly. From Clark's Gap the early road followed the present sandclay road to what is now known as Ely's Corner, past the present Paeonian Springs and Warner's Cross Roads and Wheatland and Hillsboro to the depression in the Blue Ridge known as Vestal's or Key's Gap—Gershom Keys having owned land at that point as early as 1748 and the Vestal family having operated a ferry across the Shenandoah nearby at least as early as 1754 and perhaps in 1736; for we know it was in operation at that time and that one G. Vestal was living in the immediate neighbourhood then. Washington followed this road on his mission to Fort du Quesne in 1753 and once again in 1754 as major of that expedition against the French on the Alleghany (to the command of which he later succeeded on the illness and death of Colonel Fry), which resulted in the building and surrender by him of Fort Necessity.[40] In the following year it was trodden by that brigade of Braddock's army which, under the command of Sir Peter Halkett, left the main body of the troops when that main body crossed the Potomac over into Maryland at the present Georgetown as is related in a later chapter.
In an effort to attract the increasing traffic to and from the west, Leesburg citizens incorporated in 1831 the Leesburg and Snickers' Gap Turnpike Company which built an improved road north from Clark's Gap to Snickers' Gap, as the old Williams' Gap had then come to be called; and this new road (which is the present Alexandria-Winchester Highway) took the traffic theretofore going through Vestal's Gap and has since been the northerly main route across the Blue Ridge.
To carry the old Ridge Road over Broad Run, we know that there was built, before 1755, one of the earliest highway bridges in Loudoun's territory of which record has been preserved; for on the 1755 edition of the Fry & Jefferson map a wooden bridge is shewn at that point. The picturesque stone bridge that now spans the stream, venerable as it appears, may not have been constructed before 1820, at about which time that part of the road was being improved by the Leesburg Turnpike Company; nevertheless in eastern Loudoun it is a popular legend that it was built by George Washington as a young man and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood firmly believe that to be true.
The third of the principal roads of colonial Loudoun is called by Fairfax Harrison the Colchester Road and is described by him as also, in its first beginning an Indian path, developed about 1728 by King Carter and his sons Robin and Charles from the Occoquan below the falls "past the future sites of Payne's Church and the present Fairfax Court House all the way to the Frying Pan run."[41] The Carters believed that there was copper on certain of their recently acquired lands and this road was developed to bring the ore to tidewater. It became known as the Ox Road and a year or so later joined Walter Griffin's Rolling Road running west across Little Rocky Run and eventually across Elk Lick and Bull Run, across the Carolina Road (near which crossing West's Ordinary was built), and so above the ford over Little River to the Blue Ridge Road to Williams' Gap. It was over this road that the youthful Washington returned in the spring of 1748 from his survey with George William Fairfax of the lands of Lord Fairfax in the valley and thus first set foot in the present Loudoun; crossing the Blue Ridge at Williams' Gap[42] they proceeded to William West's house, later to be licensed as West's Ordinary and still later as Lacey's. Incidentally this old building and landmark continued to stand until the year 1927 when it was quite needlessly and most unfortunately torn down.
The Colchester Road continued to be a main thoroughfare up to about 1806 when the construction of Little River Turnpike diverted most of its travel and the new road with its branches became the principal highway system in southern Loudoun.
The Virginia roads in the early days were in terrible condition for wheeled traffic. Their most earnest defenders can only allege that they were no worse than other American roads of those days and better than many, a defense that damns without even the proverbial faint praise. Englishmen of the period were still asleep in their attitude toward road building and many of the highways of England seem to have been as bad as those in America. One peculiarity of the Virginia road was its general lack of side-fencing. Adjacent property owners were quite apt to run their boundary fences across the highway, leaving a gate for the traveller to open and pass through. Curious as this may seem to us, it was not wholly without its advantage; for where the highway had become a sink-hole of mud, it thus was possible for the passer-by to make as wide a detour through adjacent fields or woods as might be necessary to avoid the obstruction. This throws light upon the effort at Georgetown, predecessor settlement of the larger Leesburg, to have the course of the Carolina Road as it passed through that hamlet definitely established by the court as early as 1742 and again in 1757.[43]
Bridges were few, far between, and primitive. There was, as we have shewn, a wooden bridge prior to 1755 carrying the Ridge Road over Broad Run and it is believed that prior to 1739, the same road crossed Difficult near Colvin Run over a bridge of sorts; but for the most part fords were used to cross streams, or ferries in the case of the Potomac and other great rivers. When fords and ferries failed, the mounted traveller swam his horse across, leaving the wayfarer on foot to such more precarious adventure as conditions and his courage offered.
In a preceding chapter we have seen the Vestrymen of Truro Parish engaged in ecclesiastical affairs committed to their charge; among their secular duties was to appoint every four years reputable Freeholders to "perambulate" the Parish, that is to say to travel over the plantations and farms within it and renew their landmarks. In Virginia this was called "processioning" but it derived from a very ancient English practice know as "beating the bounds" believed to have been brought by Saint Augustine to England from Gaul where "it may have been derived from the Roman festival of Terminus, the god of landmarks, to whom cakes and ale were offered, sports and dancing taking place at the boundaries." In England we find the "beating of the bounds" observed under Alfred and Aethelstan, whose laws mention it. In later days, maps still being rare, it continued an English parish custom, generally observed on Ascension Day or during Rogation Week. A procession was formed, headed by the Priest of the Parish, the Churchwardens and other Parish dignitaries and followed by a crowd of boys who were armed with sticks with which they beat the Parish boundary stones and were sometimes beaten themselves at each marker in order to fix those markers in their minds and to insure the location of the boundary stones being remembered through the life of the younger generation. The procession frequently ended in a "parish-ale" or feast which doubtlessly assisted in reconciling the boys to it all.[44] In earlier days the Priests sought the Divine blessing for the following harvest on the lands within the parish. But translated to Virginia the procedure was robbed of much of its formality and many of its picturesque features and came to apply to renewing the landmarks of private holdings rather than confirming in memory those of the Parish bounds. There was a Truro Vestry meeting held on the 8th October, 1743, to appoint "Processioners," which meeting, the record states, was pursuant to an order of Fairfax County Court, Loudoun then being included in Fairfax. The Vestrymen at their meeting "laid off the said Parish into Precincts and appointed Processioners in manner following." As the men appointed were representative men in their neighbourhoods and as the "Precinct" may be taken to forecast the later division of Loudoun into its Magisterial Districts of modern days, it is interesting to study so much of the record as refers to the country above Difficult Run which in a few years was to be organized as Loudoun:
"That John Trammell and John Harle procession between Difficult Run and Broad Run; that Anthony Hampton and William Moore procession between Broad Run and the south side of Goose Creek as far as the fork of Little River; that Philip Noland and John Lasswell procession between Goose Creek and Limestone Run as far as the fork of Little River; that Amos Janney and William Hawling procession between Limestone Run and the south branch of Kitoctan.