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threaded the rocky defiles of New and Kanawha rivers, and
entered the level lands of the State through its northeast
corner. The rugged sides of a mountain water-course afford
the poorest natural foot-way, and necessitate frequent crossings
from side to side. In constructing a railroad, however, these
obstacles are removed.  The side-cut and the tunnel open a
pathway unknown to the pioneer."
  This is unquestionably true of what, I may term, the details
in the course of any given route; but, as a rule, the railroads,
and the ruder tracks which preceded them, have followed the
same general direction of travel and communication. In that
region, of which Capt. Speed particularly speaks, upon the
frontiers of Virginia, where nature seems to have exerted her-
self to prevent the intrusion of man, there are piled obstacles
which not only deterred the pioneer, but, we can readily be-
lieve, might have turned even those whom some rough satirist
has characterized as " Nat'rally better ingineers than the ingi-
neers themselves, the b'ar, the buffler and the Injun." And
the fastnesses which the pioneer dared not penetrate, were not
attempted by his immediate successors and descendants. Not
so, however, as regards the routes, no matter how arduous or
rugged, which the pioneer could and did explore. They were
followed by the generation which took his place; at least so
soon ax there was adequate inducement and any methods of
commercial exchange. When the continuous flow of immigra-
tion westward had partially populated the territory north of
the Ohio and that south of the Tennessee, the Kentuckian be-
gan to trade with his neighbors over the same roads by which
his fathers had come into the land. He did not, indeed, ven-
ture where the skill and energy of those who constructed the
Chesapeake and Ohio have since pushed its daring course, but
by means of the pack-horse jtnd the flat-boat he traded with
those who dwelt on the upper Ohio. He retrod the steps of
his sires along the "Wilderness Road" to swap and barter
with his kinsmen in Virginia and East Tennessee; and doubt-
less there are old men yet living who remember to have heard
the Kentucky drovers crack their whips as they pressed
through the Saluda Gap into the Carolinas.
  Subsequently the steamboats served the same traffic on the