The outfit of the party was simple.  The men carried the usual equipment of the hunter, the women some light articles of clothing; and loaded on several led horses were such bedding and kitchen-utensils as would be needed at the end of the journey.  They followed the route taken by the explorers, sleeping at night on the ground, beneath the open air, or sheltered by an improvised tent made of two forked poles thrust into the ground and supporting a longer pole, over which was stretched a heavy blanket.  Should it rain, these tents were quickly pitched and all the travellers were soon under shelter.  At the halting-place for the night a fire was built, the cows were milked, the journey-boards unpacked, and the delicious journey-cake (misnamed “Johnny-cake”) was set before the fire or baked in the ashes.  To this was added the deer or wild turkey shot by the men during the day, and they had a repast “fit to set before a king.”  The same was done before setting out in the morning; but at noon only a short halt was made for a cold lunch from the remains of the breakfast.

Thus they journeyed for about ten days, until they reached the base of Stone Mountain.  Here they struck into a cove which breaks into the mountainside, and climbed by a winding route, but by easy stages, to the summit.  Robertson rode by the side of his wife, and in front of her, astride of the pommel of the saddle, was their child, now a bright little fellow of two or three years.  Later on he will appear again in our pages, and then disappear forever from human history.

As they wearily climbed the toilsome way, and paused to rest, as they probably did, at the summit, did not that young wife and mother look back, to gaze again upon the scenes she was leaving behind her?  What girlhood associations she had I do not know, but she was leaving them all, and the old roof-tree beneath which she had spent her young days:  all were about to pass out of her life forever.  As she glanced forward into the tangled wilderness, would she not have turned back had a vision come to her of the hardships and dangers and death that lay before her?—­her life at first buried amid the solitudes and dangers of Watauga, and then consigned to a frail boat which was to bear her a thousand miles, through untold perils, to a still more distant wilderness, where her home would be encircled with savage fire and the babe at her breast would be laid scalped and dying at her feet!

As they began the descent of the western slope of the mountain, an unexpected scene met the eyes of Robertson.  When he left it in the previous autumn, the valley was an almost unbroken solitude; now the smoke was rising from a score of cabins, about which were many evidences of civilization.  Nearly a hundred settlers were there, and the place was already a busy community.