Slowly, very slowly, the people doggedly fought their way up the long and often discouraging hill of recovery. The Spanish-American War, petty in itself, was in its foreign and, particularly, in its domestic implications, of major importance; for it showed that, with a new generation of Americans taking its place, the old sectional tears and rents were growing together and that the national fabric once again was becoming truly restored. In the last decade of the nineteenth century there was a notable inflow of new residents, new money, new determination, which continued with the succeeding years and of which the most significant result was the vigorous growth of the horse and sport-loving community in and around Middleburg, resulting in the development of one of the great, perhaps the greatest, centers of fox-hunting and horse-showing in America. It should be here recorded that to the purchase by Mr. Daniel C. Sands of an estate near Middleburg in 1907 and to his love of horses and country life, as well as his tireless energy in spreading among his many Northern friends knowledge of the charm of his new neighbourhood and building on the Loudoun horse-loving traditions, existing since early settlement, may be ascribed the great prosperity and international repute of the Middleburg environment of today. But the county at large, as well as Middleburg, has reason to be grateful to Mr. Sands. During his more than thirty years of residence here he, consistently and continuously, has been not only one of the county's most constructive citizens but one of the most generous and public-spirited as well. Again we are reminded of the extraordinary part horses and the various sports connected with them play in Loudoun's life. And all that is no matter of present day chance but the legitimate flowering of very old and greatly cherished traditions. Archdeacon Burnaby, in writing of his travels in Virginia in 1759-1760, was moved to remark that Lord Fairfax's "chief if not sole amusement was hunting; and in pursuit of this exercise he frequently carried his hounds to distant parts of the country; and entertained any gentleman of good character and decent appearance, who attended him in the field, at the inn or ordinary, where he took up his residence for the hunting season."[186] One of the ordinaries thus frequented by Lord Fairfax was West's on the old Carolina Road, just south of the present Lee-Jackson Highway, and in the territory now hunted by the Middleburg pack. [186] _Travels through the middle settlements in North America_ by Rev. (afterward Archdeacon) Andrew Burnaby, DD. 3rd Edition. 1798. Appendix p. 163. The first and second editions do not include the interesting little biography of Lord Fairfax.