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The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

-John F. Kennedy

Trivia Question of the Day

In Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, he writes:

The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain an hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Patowmac, in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea. The first glance of this scene hurries our senses into the opinion, that this earth has been created in time, that the mountains were formed first, that the rivers began to flow afterwards, that in this place particularly they have been dammed up by the Blue ridge of mountains, and have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that continuing to rise they have at length broken over at this spot, and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the impression. But the distant finishing which nature has given to the picture is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the fore-ground. It is as placid and delightful, as that is wild and tremendous. For the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach and participate of the calm below. Here the eye ultimately composes itself; and that way too the road happens actually to lead. You cross the Patowmac above the junction, pass along its side through the base of the mountain for three miles, its terrible precipices hanging in fragments over you, and within about 20 miles reach [X] and the fine country round that. This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic. Yet here, as in the neighbourhood of the natural bridge, are people who have passed their lives within half a dozen miles, and have never been to survey these monuments of a war between rivers and mountains, which must have shaken the earth itself to its center.

For today's Atlas Blogged Trivia Question of the Day, name the city that Thomas Jefferson was standing in while making these observations. [Note: Contest not open to residents of Maryland, Virginia, or West Virginia.]

Posted by Rammage on August 31, 2008 at 09:52 AM

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Comments

When I think of Jefferson and the Potomac, I'm reminded of the fact that he thought a Potomac-extending canal through the Blue Ridge (i.e., Virginia) to get into the midwest would be a perfectly legitimate function of the federal government, but when DeWitt Clinton sought federal aid for the Erie Canal (in heavily federalist New York) to do the same thing, Jefferson objected on supposed "enumerated powers" grounds.

(Sorry, I'm in a mood this morning.)

P.S. The Erie Canal was in the end not funded with any federal money.

Posted by: KipEsquire at August 31, 2008 10:55 AM

Aye. He was a complicated man, filled with contradictions. I did not know that about the Erie Canal, thanks for the input.

Posted by: Rammage at August 31, 2008 11:08 AM

If you guys were to make those types of canal comments down here in Richmond, you would get an earful from the locals about how in 1784 George Washington got the Virginia General Assembly to support a canal system to link the James River in Richmond with the Kanawha River (and Ohio).

But back to Rammage's question... oh damn, I'm a Virginia resident and therefore ineligible for the prize. Nevermind.

Posted by: Wulf at August 31, 2008 11:48 AM

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

-John F. Kennedy

Trivia Question of the Day

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