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Show 1836- 1837I Fogg's F* r West 217 A long ride over a dusty road, beneath a sultry sun, made me not unwilling to retire to an early rest. But in a few hours my slumbers were broken in upon by the glare of lightning and the crash of thunder. For nearly five weeks had the prairies been refreshed by not a solitary shower; and the withered crops and the parched soil, baked to the consistency of stone or ground up to powder, betrayed alarming evidence of the consequence. Day had succeeded day. The scorching sun had gone up in the firmament, blazed from his meridian throne, and in lurid sultriness descended to his rest. The subtle fluid had been gathering and concentrating in the skies; and, early on the night of [ 197] which I speak, an inky cloud had been perceived rolling slowly up from the western horizon, until the whole heavens were enveloped in blackness. Then the tempest burst forth. Peal upon peal the hoarse thunder came booming over the prairies; and the red lightning would glare, and stream, and almost hiss along the midnight sky, like Ossian's storm-spirit riding on the blast. At length there was a hush of elements, and all was still - " still as the spirit's silence; " then came one prolonged, deafening, terrible crash and rattle, as if the concave of the firmament had been rent asunder, and the splintered fragments, hurled abroad, were flying through the boundlessness of space; the next moment, and the torrents came weltering through the darkness. I have witnessed thunder- storms on the deep, Canada and the Gulf of Mexico; but he foiled to secure the aid either of his province or of the mother country. In the summer of 1716 he organized and led an expedition for exploring the Appalachian Mountains, named two peaks George and Spots-wood, and took possession of the Valley of Virginia in the name of George I. On his return, he established the order of " Tramontane/' for carrying on further explorations, whose members were called " Knights of the Golden Horseshoe," for the reason which Flagg gives. For a contemporary account of this expedition, see " Journal of John Fontaine " in Anna Maury, Memoirs of a Huguenot Family ( New York, 1853). Spotswood was displaced as governor in 1722, but was later ( 1730) appointed deputy postmaster of the colonies.- ED. |