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after the British and Americans captured Fort Duquesne from
the French, and called it Fort Pitt. From Fort Chissell to
Cumberland Gap was nearly two hundred miles. The routes
of travel marked out at that day are still used. The roads
which lead through the Valley of Virginia, commencing at
the Potomac, and passing through Martinsburg, Winchester,
Staunton, Lexington, Pattonsburg, Amsterdam, Salem, Big
Spring, Christiansburg, Ingles' Ferry, Newbern, Mac's Mead-
ows, Wytheville, Marion, Abingdon, are the same which. were
laid out and traveled in the early days."
  The road, or rather "trace," was first marked out by Daniel
Boone, and, Capt. Speed justly says, is a " monument to his
skill as a practical engineer and surveyor."
  "The Legislature of Virginia very early recognized the neces-
sity for a wagon road to Kentucky. In 1779 an act was passed
to the effect that, whereas great numbers of people are settling
in the country of Kentucky, and great advantages will redound
from the free and easy communication with them; commis-
sioners were appointed to explore the country on both sides of
the mountains, and trace out the most convenient site for the
road.
  I But no wagon road was made until many years thereafter.
The settlers came in such greatly increasing numbers that, by
the year 1790, the population of Kentucky was 73,000, and in
1800 it was 220,000. A very large proportion came over the
Wilderness road, and that way, as we have already seen, was
the only practicable -route for all return travel; yet it was only
a track for weary, plodding travelers on foot or horseback,
whether man, woman, or child.
  "There is a striking difference between routes selected by
the pioneers and those selected in later years for railroad
construction.  The one is the opposite of the other in some
respects. The pioneer avoided the water-courses-the civil
engineer seeks them. The pioneer went directly across the
various streams east and west of the Cumberland range; he
crossed the Holston, Clinch, Powell, Cumberland, and Rock-
castle; he climbed and descended the mountain ridges which
lay between the rivers. The civil engineer, on the contrary,
in locating the railroad which connects Virginia and Kentucky,