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