The next move would take us over into Pennsylvania, through Chambersburg and Carlisle, about which we already know, and across the Susquehanna to Harrisburg. On our right, as we go up into Pennsylvania, is the low South mountain, which is the Blue Ridge continued. All this time we are in the Great Valley. The valley of Virginia is but a part of the whole, which reaches through several states and everywhere has the Blue Ridge on the southeast and other ridges of the Appalachian mountains on the northwest. Every part of the valley is thickly settled and has fine houses and homes, because its soil produces good crops and makes the people prosperous. [Illustration: SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION] Spotswood’s journey opened the way for families from the tide-water region to settle beyond the mountains, but they were not the only settlers. It was easy for the people of the Great Valley in Pennsylvania, where the land was earlier taken up, to push to the southwest along the same valley. They found smoother traveling and better farms than if they had gone up into the mountains on the west. So we see that the valley, leading southwest, guided the stream of emigrants in that direction. The result was that the valley of Virginia was occupied partly by people entering through Pennsylvania, and partly by those who, like Spotswood, came through passes in the Blue Ridge. It was thirty years later, when most of the land was still a wilderness, that we find George Washington crossing these same mountains to survey for Lord Fairfax. His path lay between Harpers Ferry and Swift Run Gap. In this valley, during the Civil War, “Stonewall” Jackson, Sheridan, and other well-known generals took their armies up and down, and fought a number of battles. The rich farms and full barns of the valley played no small part in the strife by furnishing food for the soldiers. The headwaters of the James river are in the Great Valley. One branch flows southwest and another northeast. These come together and go out to the southeast by a gap in the Blue Ridge. To-day we come up the Shenandoah by the Norfolk and Western Railway, which continues along these branches of the James. Before long we reach Roanoke, a flourishing city just inside the Blue Ridge. Then follows the crossing of the New river, which flows northwest across the valley on its long course to the Ohio. [Illustration: FIG. 51. JAMES RIVER GAP IN THE BLUE RIDGE, FROM THE WEST] Now we are looking toward Tennessee, and the Great Valley soon takes us to several long streams which help to form the Tennessee river. The heads of these streams we shall find in Virginia, and their names are the Holston, the Clinch, and Powell’s river. The Great Valley in this southwestern part of Virginia is really divided into several valleys by long and rather high ridges that separate these rivers.