Fortunately for the Carolinas, a very notable man had become governor of Virginia ere the Tuscaroras took the war-path. There were tribes at the border,—Nottoways, Meherrins, and even a detached group of the Tuscaroras themselves,—who would have joined in the savage conspiracy against the whites had not Colonel Spotswood been governor in Virginia and shown himself capable of holding them quiet with a steady hand of authority,—a word of conciliation and a hint of force. Alexander Spotswood was no ordinary man. He added to a gentle breeding a manly bearing such as Virginians loved, and the administrative gifts which so many likable governors had lacked. His government was conducted with clear-eyed enterprise and steady capacity. It added to his consequence that he had borne the Queen’s commission in the forces of the great Marlborough on the field of Blenheim, and came to his duty in Virginia (1710) bearing a wound received on that famous field. His blood he took from Scotland, where the distinguished annals of his family might be read in many a public record; and a Scottish energy entered with him into the government of Virginia,—as well as a Scottish candor and directness in speech,—to the great irritation presently of James Blair, as aggressive a Scotsman as he, and more astute and masterful. [Illustration: BRENTON CHURCH, WHERE GOVERNOR SPOTSWOOD WORSHIPPED] It was Colonel Spotswood who, in 1716, gathered a company of gentlemen about him for a long ride of discovery into the Alleghanies. They put their horses through the very heart of the long wilderness, and won their way despite all obstacles to a far summit of the Blue Ridge, whence, first among all their countrymen, they looked forth to the westward upon the vast slopes which fell away to the Ohio and the great basin of the Mississippi. Colonel Spotswood, standing there the leader of the little group, knew that it was this way the English must come to make conquest of the continent. He urged his government at home to stretch a chain of defensive posts beyond the mountains from the lakes to the Mississippi, to keep the French from those inner valleys which awaited the coming of the white man; but he did not pause in the work he could do himself because the advice went unheeded. He kept the Indians still; he found excellent lands for a thrifty colony of Germans, and himself began the manufacture of iron in the colony, setting up the first iron furnace in America. The debts of the colony were most of them discharged, and a good trade in corn, lumber, and salt provisions sprang up with the West Indies. He rebuilt the college, recently destroyed by fire, and established a school for Indian children. He improved as he could the currency of the colony. His works were the quiet works of peace and development,—except for his vigorous suppression of the pirates of the coast,—and his administration might have outrun the year 1722, which saw