The story of the Revolutionary War in the West has been told in preceding pages, as the merest record of fact. It is unnecessary to state that it was the most important conflict ever waged there, and it is equally trite to observe that the struggle centered around Kentucky. Boone's Road had made possible the sudden movement of population westward, and this pioneer host immediately drew upon itself the enemies that otherwise would have scourged the frontiers of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. The first and principal portion of the Kentucky pioneers--those who fought the Revolutionary battles--entered Kentucky by the Cumberland Gap route. James Lane Allen writes: "That area [Kentucky] has somewhat the shape of an enormous flat foot, with a disjointed big toe, a roughly hacked-off ankle, and a missing heel. The sole of this huge foot rests solidly on Tennessee, the Ohio River trickles across the ankle and over the top, the big toe is washed entirely off by the Tennessee River, and the long-missing heel is to be found in Virginia, never having been ceded by that State. Between the Kentucky foot and the Virginia heel is piled up this immense, bony, grisly mass of the Cumberland Mountain, extending some three hundred miles northeast and southwest. It was through this heel that Kentucky had to be peopled. The thin, half-starved, weary line of pioneer civilizers had to penetrate it, and climb this obstructing mountain wall, as a line of traveling ants might climb the wall of a castle. In this case only the strongest of the ants--the strongest in body, the strongest in will--succeeded in getting over and establishing their colony in the country far beyond. Luckily there was an enormous depression in the wall, or they might never have scaled it. During about half a century this depression was the difficult, exhausting entrance-point through which the State received the largest part of its people, the furniture of their homes, and the implements of their civilization; so that from the very outset that people represented the most striking instance of a survival of the fittest that may be observed in the founding of any American commonwealth. The feeblest of the ants could not climb the wall; the idlest of them would not."[21] Mr. Speed agrees wholly in this opinion: "The settlers came in ... increasing numbers.... A very large proportion came over the Wilderness Road."[22] In the early days river travel was not practicable. During the Revolutionary War and for some time thereafter travel down the Ohio River was dangerous, both because of the hostility of the savages and because of the condition of the river. In earlier days the journey from the Ohio into the populated parts of Kentucky was a great hardship. The story of one who emigrated to Kentucky by way of the Ohio shows plainly why many preferred the longer land route by way of Cumberland Gap. The following is from an autobiographical statement made by Spencer Record,