et with Colonel Richard Henderson, who is running the
line between Virginia and North Carolina. At this meeting we were much
rejoiced. He gave us every information we wished, and further informed
us that he had purchased a quantity of corn in Kentucky, to be shipped
at the Falls of Ohio for the use of the Cumberland settlement. We are
now without bread and are compelled to hunt the buffalo to preserve
life....

"Monday, April 24th. This day we arrived at our journey's end at the Big
Salt Lick, where we have the pleasure of finding Captain Robertson
and his company. It is a source of satisfaction to us to be enabled to
restore to him and others their families and friends, who were entrusted
to our care, and who, sometime since, perhaps, despaired of ever meeting
again...."

Past the camps of the Chickamaugans--who were retreating farther and
farther down the twisting flood, seeking a last standing ground in the
giant caves by the Tennessee--these white voyagers had steered their
pirogues. Near Robertson's station, where they landed after having
traversed the triangle of the three great rivers which enclose the
larger part of western Tennessee, stood a crumbling trading house
marking the defeat of a Frenchman who had, one time, sailed in from the
Ohio to establish an outpost of his nation there. At a little distance
were the ruins of a rude fort cast up by the Cherokees in the days when
the redoubtable Chickasaws had driven them from the pleasant shores of
the western waters. Under the towering forest growth lay vast burial
mounds and the sunken foundations of walled towns, telling of a departed
race which had once flashed its rude paddles and had its dream of
permanence along the courses of these great waterways. Now another
tribe had come to dream that dream anew. Already its primitive keels had
traced the opening lines of its history on the face of the immemorial
rivers.

Chapter IX. King's Mountain

About the time when James Robertson went from Watauga to fling out the
frontier line three hundred miles farther westward, the British took
Savannah. In 1780 they took Charleston and Augusta, and overran Georgia.
Augusta was the point where the old trading path forked north and west,
and it was the key to the Back Country and the overhill domain. In
Georgia and the Back Country of South Carolina there were many Tories
ready to rally to the King's standard whenever a King's officer should
carry it through their m