Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Fredericksburg: Past, Present and Future
The expanse of water just below the falls was then so wide that the boat of Captain Smith, when near the middle of the river, was beyond effective range either of the Indian arrows or of the English muskets. Something like a lake must in fact then have covered the Stafford ?ats and a part of those of the Spotsylvania side. Yet we need not be sur prised at the change which has occurred in the 272 year that have passed. Even the grandparents of the present generation lived in a time when large barques and schooners heavily laden were able to ascend the river to Falmouth and there to discharge their cargoes and receive return car goes of wheat and tobacco. And some of us are able, by our personal memories, to ascend to the times when the river was much wider and deeper than now. Therefore the feat attributed to George ivashington, by a tradition much more reliable than that of the cherry-tree and the hatchet, that he threw a stone across the river at a point on the bank which skirted the \vashington farm, was a greater triumph of muscular strength and dexterity than such a performance would now be.
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