friends and neighbors. Even the most informed and intelligent, where
information and intelligence were cultivated, knew so little of the
immense extent of country, now designated as the "Mississippi Valley,"
that a book, published near the year 1800, in Philadelphia or New York,
by a writer of talent and standing, speaks of the _many_ mouths of the
Missouri, as entering the Mississippi _far below the Ohio_.

The simple inmates of cabins, in the remote region bordering on the new
country, knew still less about it; as they had not penetrated its
wilderness, and were destitute of that general knowledge which prevents
the exercise of the exaggerations of vague conjecture. There was,
indeed, ample room for the indulgence of speculation upon the features
which the unexplored land was characterized. Its mountains, plains, and
streams, animals, and men, were yet to be discovered and named. It might
be found the richest land under the sun, exhaustless in fertility,
yielding the most valuable productions, and unfailing in its resources.
It was possible it would prove a sterile desert. Imagination could not
but expatiate in this unbounded field and unexplored wilderness; and
there are few persons entirely secure from the influence of
imagination. The real danger attending the first exploration of a
country filled with wild animals and savages; and the difficulty of
carrying a sufficient supply of ammunition to procure food, during a
long journey, necessarily made on foot, had prevented any attempt of the
kind. The Alleghany mountains had hitherto stood an unsurmounted barrier
between the Atlantic country and the shores of the beautiful Ohio.

Not far from this period, Dr. Walker, an intelligent and enterprising
Virginian, collected a small party, and actually crossed the mountains
at the Cumberland Gap, after traversing Powell's valley. One of his
leading inducements to this tour, was the hope of making botanical