THE WESTERN COUNTRY 261 



tion or is more attentively regarded by the whole of 

 America than the new colony at Kentucky. I make no 

 scruple therefore to set down here the information 

 regarding this colony which I was able to assemble at 

 Pittsburg. Before the war and even during it, but 

 altogether within the space of a few years, nearly 

 20,000 people had gradually removed from the frontier 

 regions over the mountains to help increase the planta- 

 tions there ; and now that the war is ended numbers 

 of people are going thither daily and by every road ; 

 we met them everywhere. This general emigration 

 is to be explained in several ways ; partly by the desire 

 to escape the taxes imposed during the war and still 

 increasing ; again, a propensity for a free and un- 

 restricted mode of life, fear of punishment and of the 

 law, necessity or the spirit of adventure, but chiefly 

 from the honest purpose of providing for growing 

 families. The owner of a small estate nearer the coast 

 sells it, and with the proceeds he can purchase 6-8-10 

 times as much land beyond the mountains, and is able 

 to leave to each of his children as much as he him- 

 self formerly possessed, having first by their help 

 brought the land into an arable state. 



The Kentucky is a large river ; it takes its rise in 

 the Alleghany mountains under the name of Warrior's 

 Branch, is joined by several other streams, and after 

 a course of more than 400 miles unites with the Ohio, 

 being 200 yards wide at the point of junction. Its 

 current is throughout wide and deep and not rapid. 

 Along its banks everywhere there is said to be the 

 best land, the woods shading them yielding the finest 

 timber. From this stream the whole extensive colony 

 takes its name, but about its mouth, from the generally 



