Thus equipped, the showy cavalcade passed through the main streets of the small town, which had succeeded Jamestown as the Virginian capital, and rode away over the westward-leading road. On they went, mile after mile, others joining them, as they passed onward, the party steadily increasing in numbers until it reached a place called Germanna, on the Rapid Ann--now the Rapidan--River, on the edge of the Spotsylvania Wilderness. No doubt you will wish to know who these men were and what was the object of their journey. It was a romantic one, as you will learn,--a journey of adventure into the unknown wilderness. At that time Virginia had been settled more than a hundred years, yet its people knew very little about it beyond the seaboard plain. West of this rose the Blue Ridge Mountains, behind which lay a great mysterious land, almost as unknown as the mountains of the moon. There were people as late as that who thought that the Mississippi River rose in these mountains. The Virginians had given this land of mystery a name. They called it Orange County. There were rumors that it was filled with great forests and lofty mountains, that it held fertile valleys watered by beautiful rivers, that it was a realm of strange and wonderful scenes. The Indians, who had been driven from the east, were still numerous there, and wild animals peopled the forests plentifully, but few of the whites had ventured within its confines. Now and then a daring hunter had crossed the Blue Ridge into this country and brought back surprising tales of what was to be seen there, but nothing that could be trusted was known about the land beyond the hills. All this was of great interest to Alexander Spotswood, who was then governor of Virginia. He was a man whose life had been one of adventure and who had distinguished himself as a soldier at the famous battle of Blenheim, and he was still young and fond of adventure when the king chose him to be governor of the oldest American colony. We do not propose to tell the whole story of Governor Spotswood; but as he was a very active and enterprising man, some of the things he did may be of interest. He had an oddly shaped powder-magazine built at Williamsburg, which still stands in that old town, and he opened the college of William and Mary free to the sons of the few Indians who remained in the settled part of Virginia. Then he built iron-furnaces and began to smelt iron for the use of the people. Those were the first iron-furnaces in the colonies, and the people called him the "Tubal Cain of Virginia," after a famous worker in iron mentioned in the Bible. His furnaces were at the settlement of Germanna, where the expedition made its first stop. This name came from a colony of Germans whom he had brought there to work his iron-mines and forges.