level of
Kentucky," intersected Walker's route at two points, and crossed
Cumberland Mountain at Pound Gap on the return journey. This was
a far more extended journey than Walker's, enabling Gist to
explore the fertile valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami
rivers and to gain a view of the beautiful meadows of Kentucky.

It is eminently significant of the spirit of the age, which was
inaugurating an era of land hunger unparalleled in American
history, that the first authentic records of the trans-Alleghany
were made by surveyors who visited the country as the agents of
great land companies. The outbreak of the French and Indian War
so soon afterward delayed for a decade and more any important
colonization of the West. Indeed, the explorations and findings
of Walker and Gist were almost unknown, even to the companies
they represented. But the conclusion of peace in 1763, which gave
all the region between the mountains and the Mississippi to the
British, heralded the true beginning of the westward expansionist
movement in the Old Southwest, and inaugurated the constructive
leadership of North Carolina in f he occupation and colonization
of the imperial domain of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley.

In the middle years of the century many families of Virginia
gentry removed to the back country of North Carolina in the
fertile region ranging from Williamsborough on the east to
Hillsborough on the west. There soon arose in this section of the
colony a society marked by intellectual distinction, social
graces, and the leisured dignity of the landlord and the large
planter. So conspicuous for means, intellect, culture, and
refinement were the people of this group, having "abundance of
wealth and leisure for enjoyment," that Governor Josiah Martin,
in passing through this region some years later, significantly
observes: "They have great preeminence, as well with respect to
soil and cultivation, as to the manners and condition of the
inhabitants, in which last respect the difference is so great
that one would be led to think them people of another region."
This new wealthy class which was now turning its gaze toward the
unoccupied lands along the frontier was "dominated by the
democratic ideals of pioneers rather than by the aristocratic
tendencies of slave-holding planters." From the cross-fertilization
of the ideas of two social groups--this back-country
gentry, of innate qualities of leadership, democratic
instincts, econ