with the head-spring of the Potomac is a legend, noting that it was determined by the king in council, April 11, 1745, that this line should be the westerly limit of the Fairfax domain. A section of the second state of the plate of this map is annexed in fac-simile from a copy in Harvard College library.[658] [Illustration: NORTHERN NECK OF VIRGINIA. 1736-1737.] An account has been given elsewhere[659] of what has been lost and preserved of the documentary records of Virginia. The introduction to W. P. Palmer’s _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, 1652-1781, summarizes the documents for the period of our present survey which are contained in the body of that book, and they largely concern the management of the Indians on the borders.[660] Among the Sparks MSS. in Harvard College library are various notes and extracts respecting Maryland and Virginia from the English records (1727-1761) in the hand of George Chalmers, as made for his own use in writing his _Revolt of the American Colonies_.[661] There were various editions of the laws during the period now under consideration. What is known as the Purvis collection, dedicated to Effingham, was published in London in 1686; and a survey, giving _An abridgement of the Laws in force and use in her majesty’s plantations_, including Virginia, was printed in London in 1704. The acts after 1662 were published in London in 1728; while the first Virginia imprint on any edition was that of W. Parks, of Williamsburg, in 1733; and John Mercer’s _Abridgment_, published in Williamsburg four years later (1737), was reprinted in Glasgow in 1759. The acts since 1631 were again printed at Williamsburg in 1752.[662] The earliest description of the country coming within the present survey is John Clayton’s _Account of the several Observables in Virginia_ (1688), which Force has included in the third volume of his Tracts. A paper on the condition of Virginia in 1688 is the first chapter in W. H. Foote’s _Sketches of Virginia_ (1850). An “Account of the present state and government of Virginia” is in the fifth volume (p. 124) of the _Massachusetts Hist. Soc. Collections_. The document was presented to that society by Carter B. Harrison, of Virginia. It seems to have been written in England in 1696-98, in the time of Andros’ governorship, and by one who was hostile to him and who had been in the colony.