After crossing the Ohio, Gist journeyed over a hundred miles down the southern bank of the river, and on March eighteenth crossed "the lower Salt Lick Creek," the Licking River. Reports of Indians at the "Falls" and "the footsteps of some Indians plain on the Ground" made him desist from visiting that spot, but he took down descriptions of it. On the nineteenth he turned southward into the interior. On the twentieth he ascended Pilot Knob, near Clay City, Powell County, and writes of the view from that height from which he saw, as John Finley wrote later, "with pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucky." With but a glimpse of the good lands of Kentucky, Gist, like Walker before him, journeyed into the mountainous country to the southeast. For a month he floundered around in the desolate laurel ridges where Walker had spent so many distressing days the year before. On Red River Gist crossed Walker's route and came on homeward between Walker's outward and homeward courses. From Red River he went through Pound Gap and eastward, down what is known as Gist's or Guesse's Fork of the Clinch in Wise County, Virginia, and then upon Bluestone, a tributary of New River. On the thirteenth of May he crossed Walker's route again at Inglis Ferry, near Draper's Meadows. On the seventeenth he passed into North Carolina through Flower or Wood's Gap toward his home on the Yadkin. He reached home on the eighteenth and found that his family had removed to Roanoke, thirty-five miles eastward, because of depredations of the Indians during the winter. Gist's journey was far more successful than Walker's. He found the fine fertile valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami Rivers north of the Ohio, and he caught a glimpse of the beautiful meadows of Kentucky. He singularly made a complete circle about the land between the Monongahela and Kanawha Rivers, where the Ohio Company's grant of land was made. As he did not approach it on any side it is probable that he knew that only rough land lay there. Had it not been for the sudden breaking out of the old French War, the Ohio Company would undoubtedly have settled on lands in the Ohio Valley according to Gist's advice. Hostilities on the frontier soon drove back the farther settlements, and rendered activities in the land Gist had discovered out of the question, either on the part of land companies or private individuals. CHAPTER III ANNALS OF THE ROAD