%202.  State of Franklin.%—­Before the Revolution closed, emigrants under James Robertson and John Donelson planted Nashville and half a dozen other settlements on the Cumberland, in middle Tennessee.  After the Revolution ended, so many settlers were in eastern Tennessee that they tried to make a new state.  North Carolina, following the example of her Northern sisters, ceded to Congress her claim to what is now Tennessee in 1784.  But the people on the Watauga no sooner heard, of it than under the lead of John Sevier they organized the state of Franklin, whereupon North Carolina repealed the act of cession and absorbed the new state by making the Franklin officials her officials for the district of Tennessee.  In 1789 she again ceded the district, and in May of that year Tennessee became part of the public domain.

%203.  Squatters in Ohio.%—­The cession to Congress of the land north of the Ohio led to an emigration from Virginia and Kentucky to what is now the state of Ohio.  As this territory was to be sold to pay the national debt, Congress was forced to order the squatters away, and when they refused to go, sent troops to burn their cabins, destroy their crops, and drive them across the Ohio.  The lawful settlement of the territory began after the Ohio and Scioto companies bought their lands in 1787, and John C. Symmes purchased his in 1788.

%204.  Pittsburg in 1790.%—­At Pittsburg, then the greatest town in the United States west of the Alleghany Mountains, were some 200 houses, mostly of logs, and 2000 people, a newspaper, and a few rude manufactories.  The life of the town was its river trade.  Pittsburg was the place where emigrants “fitted out” for the West.  A settler intending to go down the Ohio valley with his family and his goods would lay in a stock of powder and ball, buy flour and ham enough to last him for a month, and secure two rude structures which passed under the name of boats.

[Illustration:  %The first millstones and salt kettle in Ohio%]

%205.  A Trip down the Ohio in 1790.%—­In the long keel boat he would put his wife, his children, and such travelers as had been waiting at Pittsburg for a chance to go down the river.  In the flatboat would be his cattle or his stores.  Two dangers beset the voyager on the Ohio.  His boat might become entangled in the branches of the trees that overhung the river, or be fired into by the Indians who lurked in the woods.  The cabin of the keel boat, therefore, was low, that it might glide under the trees, and the roof and sides were made as nearly bullet-proof as possible.  The whole craft was steered by a huge oar mounted on a pivot at the stern.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See the boats in the pictures on next page.]

[Illustration:  Map of Ohio]