sticks with which the fire is kindled.  Then the limbs of dead trees are heaped upon the blaze, and one of the travellers sets about preparing supper for the whole party.  It is probably of venison, for there are plenty of deer in that region.  As soon as the burning logs have deposited a good bed of ashes, a hole is scooped in them, and in it is deposited the haunch or other portion.  When sufficiently done, it is taken out, the ashes are knocked away, and then—­no civilized man, whose appetite has never been sharpened by open-air exposure in the woods, can understand the keen avidity with which the delicious viand is consumed.

Supper over, each traveller lights his pipe of fragrant “Honey-Dew,” or still more fragrant “Kinnikinnick”; and the evening is most likely whiled away in pleasant talk and narrative of “moving accidents” by field and forest.  Boone was a good narrator, and, though but five years the senior of Robertson, had already a large experience of thrilling adventure.  At last, heaping fresh logs upon the fire, to keep up the blaze till morning and scare away the wolves and panthers that might be attracted by the scent of the venison, the travellers would spread their blankets upon the ground, turn their feet to the fire, and sink into slumber.

Thus they encamped by night and journeyed by day, till they reached the summit of the Stone Mountains, the northerly portion of the long range which is now the boundary between Tennessee and North Carolina.  And here a view broke upon them such as Robertson, accustomed as he was to the comparatively tame scenery of Wake County, had never beheld.  Spread out at their feet was a beautiful valley, some thirty miles in length by twenty in width, and covered by a luxuriant forest, broken here and there by grassy openings, one of which, larger than the rest, was the “Watauga Old Fields” of the Pioneers.  Some twenty miles away, two small rivers united their currents and flowed together to the west through a gap in the encircling mountains.  Tracing their courses up among the hills, the explorers would catch glimpses of numerous smaller streams, which feed the larger ones and water the whole of this enchanting region.

The valley, which is itself two thousand feet above the sea, is hemmed in by huge mountain-ranges,—­the Holston on the north and west, and the Iron and Stone Mountains on the south and east,—­which break into peaks—­the White-Top, the Bald, and the Roan—­the lowest of which towers more than a mile into the air.  These mountains protect the valley from the chill winds of winter, and temper the summer breezes to a delicious coolness, making the atmosphere the most delightful that can be imagined.  The bottoms along the rivers are wide and productive, bearing then a thick crop of tall grass, on which multitudes of deer, elk, and buffalo were browsing.  The soil of the bottoms is a deep, dark loam, capable of yielding immense crops of wheat and Indian corn, while the higher and less fertile land along the base of the mountain will produce fruits of the most delicate flavor and in astonishing abundance.