On the twenty-sixth they "left the Inhabitans," as Dr. Walker called the line of civilization, and were at last within the wild land where no settlers had yet come. On the night of the twenty-ninth the "Dogs were very uneasie," and the next day, on Reedy Creek, a branch of the South Fork of the Holston, the tracks of a party of Indians were discovered, which explained the restlessness of the dogs. It is probably little realized in this day how valuable dogs were to explorers and immigrants. They were not only of service in giving warning of the approach of strangers, but were well-nigh indispensable in securing game and in searching for lost horses. Dr. Walker's love for dogs is a tradition in the family, and his care of them on this journey is typical of the gentleman and the wise frontiersman. At the junction of Reedy Creek and the Holston--an historic spot in Tennessee--Walker found a gigantic elm tree, which measured twenty-five feet in circumference at a distance of three feet from the ground. Pioneers and explorers considered the study of trees a fine art. By this means they always judged the quality of the soil, and knew at a glance by the growth that stood on it the character of any piece of land. The diaries of all that old school of western adventurers contain frequent mention of trees which were an almost infallible criterion of the soil beneath. Washington had keen eyes for trees--as for everything else--as illustrated in the journal of his trip down the Ohio River in 1770. On the fourth of November he found a sycamore on the Great Kanawha, in comparison with which this first elm of Walker's was insignificant. It measured, three feet from the ground, forty-five feet in circumference, and near by stood another measuring thirty-one feet around. Upon hearing about this larger tree, some one remarked that Washington might have told the truth about the cherry tree but he told a "whopper" about the sycamore. But it was not guess-work, for the record states clearly that the girth of the larger tree lacked two inches of being the complete forty-five feet. Trees along the Ohio grew to an immense size; an old Ohio River pilot affirms that in his boyhood a burned trunk of a sycamore stood on his father's farm on the Little Muskingum, into which he has frequently driven a horse, turned it about, and come out again. General Harmar found on the Ohio a button-wood tree forty-two feet in circumference, which held forty men within its trunk.