ts.

We can scarcely comprehend the motive which led this solitary family to
push on, league after league, farther and farther from civilization,
through the trackless forests. At length they reached the Holston
River. This stream takes its rise among the western ravines of the
Alleghanies, in Southwestern Virginia. Flowing hundreds of miles
through one of the most solitary and romantic regions upon the globe,
it finally unites with the Clinch River, thus forming the majestic
Tennessee.

One hundred years ago, this whole region, west of the Alleghanies, was
an unexplored and an unknown wilderness. Its silent rivers, its
forests, and its prairies were crowded with game. Countless Indian
tribes, whose names even had never been heard east of the Alleghanies,
ranged this vast expanse, pursuing, in the chase, wild beasts scarcely
more savage than themselves.

The origin of these Indian tribes and their past history are lost in
oblivion. Centuries have come and gone, during which joys and griefs,
of which we now can know nothing, visited their humble lodges.
Providence seems to have raised up a peculiar class of men, among the
descendants of the emigrants from the Old World, who, weary of the
restraints of civilization, were ever ready to plunge into the wildest
depths of the wilderness, and to rear their lonely huts in the midst of
all its perils, privations, and hardships.

This solitary family of the Crocketts followed down the northwestern
banks of the Hawkins River for many a weary mile, until they came to a
spot which struck their fancy as a suitable place to build their Cabin.
In subsequent years a small village called Rogersville was gradually
reared upon this spot, and the territory immediately around was
organized into what is now known as Hawkins County. But then, for
leagues in every direction, the solemn forest stood in all its
grandeur. Here Mr. Crockett, alone and unaided save by his wife and
children, constructed a little shanty, which could have been but little
more than a hunter's camp. He could not lift solid logs to build a
substantial house. The hard-trodden ground was the only floor of the
single room which he enclosed. It was roofed with bark of trees piled
heavily on, which afforded quite effectual protection from the rain. A
hole cut through the slender logs was the only window. A fire was built
in one corner, and the smoke eddied through a hole left in the roof.
The skins of bears, buffaloes, an