But all this, seemingly, is neither here nor there--so far as Walker's Journal is concerned. There is not one mention of the political crisis then at hand; instead of French claims, Walker deals with tired horses or broken-legged dogs, and where one might suppose he would mention national boundary lines he tells only of cutting names on trees. And at the end, where the reader might look for a summary statement of the results of his tour he finds this: "I got home about noon. We killed in the Journey 13 Buffaloes, 8 Elks, 53 Bears, 20 Deer, 4 Wild Geese, about 150 Turkeys, besides small game. We might have killed three times as much meat, if we had wanted it." Yet, so far as human interest is concerned, the record is exceptionally entertaining, and to a student of the great thoroughfare from Virginia to Kentucky it is full of meaning; because of its many references to the difficulties of traveling at that early date, and to the varied experiences of explorers on the earliest thoroughfares westward. It is this story of experience in traveling west in 1750 that makes Walker's Journal of interest in the present study. On the day after the party left Colonel Fry's, "We set off about 8," writes Dr. Walker, "but the day proving wet, we only went to Thomas Joplin's on Rockfish. This is a pretty River, which might at a small expense be made fit for transporting Tobacco; but it has lately been stopped by a Mill Dam near the Mouth to the prejudice of the upper inhabitants who would at their own expense clear and make it navigable, were they permitted." Virginia's great industry evidently flourished this far from tidewater even at this early date, though handicapped by these dams which were erected by the "Averice of Millers," on which Dr. Walker comments again in his next day's record. The record for Sunday, the eleventh, is appropriately brief: "11th. The Sabbath." In only one or two instances did the party travel on Sunday, and then the journey was occasioned by necessity. On the twelfth the party crossed the Upper James River above the mouth of the Rivanna, and lodged with one Thomas Hunt.