PIRATES IN THE MOUNTAINS 59 



their headwaters still are on the back of these 

 mountains. 



The mighty Tennessee River is made up of the 

 volume of three or more beheaded rivers. In 

 recent geological times there were upheavals 

 and subsidences of the earth in the mountains of 

 the South, and streams seem to have dug to right 

 and left and worked headward at a lively rate. 

 In the river feud the Tennessee seems to have 

 been the most successful one. Eastern Ken- 

 tucky and Tennessee, western Virginia, West 

 Virginia, and other states have many water gaps 

 former channels of streams which lost their 

 heads and left these canons without water. 



Cumberland Gap, Virginia, has a good geo- 

 logical background and the story of river piracy 

 in its history. It is a useful and much-used 

 thoroughfare through a long and formidable 

 mountain barrier. I suppose the deer, the black 

 bears, and the Indians had trails through it long 

 before the white man came to this continent. 



The orator, Henry Clay, a man of vision, 

 visited it that he might better give to his imagi- 

 nation pictures of the long and unending pro- 

 cession that was flowing through it. The pass 

 for years was the route over which and through 

 which the pioneers, trappers, explorers, and 

 adventurers, thousands of them, flowed into 

 the valleys and the mountains of the great West. 



