Of the country beyond it, little was positively known or accurately understood.  A wandering Indian would imperfectly delineate upon the sand, a feeble outline of its more prominent physical features—­its magnificent rivers, with their numerous tributaries—­its lofty mountains, its dark forests, its extended plains and its vast extent.  A voyage in a canoe, from the source of the Hogohegee[9] to the Wabash,[10] required for its performance, in their figurative language, ‘two paddles, two warriors, three moons.’  The Ohio itself was but a tributary of a still larger river, of whose source, size and direction, no intelligible account could be communicated or understood.  The Muscle Shoals and the obstructions in the river above them, were represented as mighty cataracts and fearful whirlpools, and the Suck, as an awful vortex.  The wild beasts with which the illimitable forests abounded, were numbered by pointing to the leaves upon the trees, or the stars in a cloudless sky.

“These glowing descriptions of the West seemed rather to stimulate than to satisfy the intense curiosity of the approaching settlers.  Information more reliable, and more minute, was, from time to time, furnished from other sources.  In the Atlantic cities, accounts had been received from French and Spanish traders, of the unparalleled beauty and fertility of the western interior.  These reports, highly colored and amplified, were soon received and known upon the frontier.  Besides, persons engaged in the interior traffic with the south-western Indian tribes had, in times of peace, penetrated their territories—­traded with and resided amongst the natives—­and upon their return to the white settlements, confirmed what had been previously reported in favor of the distant countries they had seen.  As early as 1690, Doherty, a trader from Virginia, had visited the Cherokees and afterward lived among them a number of years.  In 1730, Adair, from South Carolina, had traveled, not only through the towns of this tribe, but had extended his tour to most of the nations south and west of them.  He was not only an enterprising trader but an intelligent tourist.  To his observations upon the several tribes which he visited, we are indebted for most that is known of their earlier history.  They were published in London in 1775.

“In 1740 other traders went among the Cherokees from Virginia.  They employed Mr Vaughan as a packman, to transport their goods.  West of Amelia County, the country was then thinly inhabited; the last hunter’s cabin that he saw was on Otter River, a branch of the Staunton, now in Bedford County, Va.  The route pursued was along the Great Path to the centre of the Cherokee nation.  The traders and pack-men generally confined themselves to this path till it crossed the Little Tennessee River, then spreading themselves out among the several Cherokee villages west of the mountain, continued their traffic as low down the Great Tennessee as the Indian settlements