On the 8th of April, 1782, M. de Chastellux set out from Williamsburg for Rockbridge County. “On the 8th I set out with Mr. Lynch, then my aid-de-camp and adjutant, Mr. Frank Dillon, my second aid-de-camp, and M. le Chevalier d’Oyré, of the Engineers. Six servants and a led horse composed our train, so that our little caravan consisted of four masters, six servants and eleven horses. I regulated my journey by the spring, and gave it time sufficient to precede us. The eighteen miles through which we passed before we baited our horses at Bird’s Tavern were sufficiently known to me, for it was the same road I traveled the year before in coming from Williamsburg. The remaining sixteen, which completed our day’s work and brought us to New Kent Courthouse, offered nothing curious. All I learned by a conversation with Mr. Bird was that he had been pillaged by the English when they passed his house in their march to Westover in pursuit of M. de la Fayette, and in returning to Williamsburg after endeavoring in vain to come up with him. Mr. Bird repeated with indignation that the refugee camp followers had taken from him the very boots from off his legs. As the next day’s journey was to be longer than that of the preceding one, we left New Kent Courthouse before 8 o’clock, and rode twenty miles to Newcastle, where I resolved to give our horses two hours repose. When the heat was a little abated and our horses were somewhat reposed we continued our journey that we might arrive before dark at Hanover Courthouse, from which we were yet sixteen miles. The country through which we passed is one of the finest of lower Virginia. There are many well cultivated estates and handsome houses. We arrived at Hanover Courthouse before sunset, and alighted at a tolerable handsome inn--a very large saloon and a covered portico to receive the company who assemble every three months at the courthouse, either on private or public affairs. This asylum is the more necessary, as there are no other houses in the neighborhood.” From Hanover Courthouse, which, as well as New Kent, had reason to remember the passage of the English, the party proceeded at 9 the next morning towards Offley, the residence for the time of General Nelson, recently Governor of the State. “I had got acquainted with him during the expedition to York, at which critical moment he was Governor, and conducted himself with the courage of a brave soldier and the zeal of a good citizen. I am sorry to add that the only recompense of his labors was the hatred of a great part of his fellow citizens, arising from the necessity under which he had often labored of pressing their horses, carriages and forage.”