Although the brave glory of this pioneer age shines so brightly on the Lion Rampant of Caledonia, not to Scots alone does that whole glory belong. The second largest racial stream which flowed into the Back Country of Virginia and North Carolina was German.

Most of these Germans went down from Pennsylvania and were generally called "Pennsylvania Dutch," an incorrect rendering of Pennsylvanische Deutsche. The upper Shenandoah Valley was settled almost entirely by Germans. They were members of the Lutheran, German Reformed, and Moravian churches. The cause which sent vast numbers of this sturdy people across the ocean, during the first years of the eighteenth century, was religious persecution. By statute and by word the Roman Catholic powers of Austria sought to wipe out the Salzburg Lutherans and the Moravian followers of John Huss. In that region of the Rhine country known in those days as the German Palatinate, now a part of Bavaria, Protestants were being massacred by the troops of Louis of France, then engaged in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13) and in the zealous effort to extirpate heretics from the soil of Europe. In 1708, by proclamation, Good Queen Anne offered protection to the persecuted Palatines and invited them to her dominions. Twelve thousand of them went to England, where they were warmly received by the English. But it was no slight task to settle twelve thousand immigrants of an alien speech in England and enable them to become independent and self-supporting. A better solution of their problem lay in the Western World: The Germans needed homes and the Queen's overseas dominions needed colonists. They were settled at first along the Hudson, and eventually many of them took up lands in the fertile valley of the Mohawk.

For fifty years or more German and Austrian Protestants poured into America. In Pennsylvania their influx averaged about fifteen hundred a year, and that colony became the distributing center for the German race in America. By 1727, Adam Muller and his little company had established the first white settlement in the Valley of Virginia. In 1732 Joist Heydt went south from York, Pennsylvania, and settled on the Opequan Creek at or near the site of the present city of Winchester.

The life of Count Zinzendorf, called "the Apostle," one of the leaders of the Moravian immigrants, glows like a star out of those dark and troublous times. Of high birth and gentle nurture, he forsook whatever of ease his station promised him and fitted himsclf for evangelical work. In 1741 he visited the Wyoming Valley to bring his religion to the Delawares and Shawanoes. He was not of those picturesque Captains of the Lord who bore their muskets on their shoulders when they went forth to preach.

Armored only with the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, his feet "shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace," he went out into the country of these bloodthirsty tribes and told them that he had come to them in their darkness to teach the love of the Christ which lighteth the world. The Indians received him suspiciously. One day while he sat in his tent writing, some Delawares drew near to slay him and were about to strike when they saw two deadly snakes crawl in from the opposite side of the tent, move directly towards the Apostle, and pass harmlessly over his body. Thereafter they regarded him as under spiritual protection. Indeed so widespread was his good fame among the tribes that for some years all Moravian settlements along the borders were unmolested. Painted savages passed through on their way to war with enemy bands or to raid the border, but for the sake of one consecrated spirit, whom they had seen death avoid, they spared the lives and goods of his fellow believers. When Zinzendorf departed a year later, his mantle fell on David Zeisberger, who lived the love he taught for over fifty years and converted many savages. Zeisberger was taken before the Governor and army heads at Philadelphia, who had only too good reason to be suspicious of priestly counsels in the tents of Shem: but he was able to impress white men no less than simple savages with the nobility of the doctrine he had learned from the Apostle.

In 1751 the Moravian Brotherhood purchased one hundred thousand acres in North Carolina from Lord Granville. Bishop Spangenburg was commissioned to survey this large acreage, which was situated in the present county of Forsyth east of the Yadkin, and which is historically listed as the Wachovia Tract. In 1753, twelve Brethren left the Moravian settlements of Bethlehem and Nazareth, in Pennsylvania, and journeyed southward to begin the founding of a colony on their new land. Brother Adam Grube, one of the twelve, kept a diary of the events of this expedition.*

* This diary is printed in full in "Travels in the American Colonies." edited by N. D. Mereness.

Honor to whom honor is due. We have paid it, in some measure, to the primitive Gaels of the Highlands for their warrior strength and their fealty, and to the enlightened Scots of Ulster for their enterprise and for their sacrifice unto blood that free conscience and just laws might promote the progress and safeguard the intercourse of their kind. Now let us take up for a moment Brother Grube's "Journal" even as we welcome, perhaps the more gratefully, the mild light of evening after the flooding sun, or as our hearts, when too strongly stirred by the deeds of men, turn for rest to the serene faith and the naive speech of little children.