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Alexandria, Virginia is known both as George Washington's home town and as the Scottish capital of the United States. It was named after a Scotsman, John Alexander, who in 1670 bought 6,000 acres of land, including what is today the city, for "Six thousand pounds of Tobacco and Cask." Most of the early settlers in the small seaport community were Scots who found the climate and commercial prospects an agreeable exchange for their austere life and homeland.
One of these Scots, John Carlyle of Dumfries, came to America at the age of 21 with fine credentials and great ambitions, hopeful of making "a fortune sufficient...to live independent." He would succeed far beyond his dreams.
Ancient heroes have long since vanished into the half-light and damp air of Nether Largie's chambered tombs. Sacred fires no longer rise from the numerous cairns on the surrounding high ridges. Only the wind sings around the cup-and-ring-marked standing stones scattered throughout the valley. And at the center of this silent ritual landscape stand the mysterious stone circles of Temple Wood.
Temple Wood is the heart of an unusually dense concentration of prehistoric monuments. Lying in the Kilmartin valley, north of Lochgilphead, Argyll, Temple Wood (also known as Half-Moon Wood) may have been the religious center of Neolithic sacrificial or burial rites.
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