[Illustration: FIG. 58. KENTUCKY BLUE GRASS] The Wilderness road came out on the river at the falls of the Ohio, and here, as we have learned, a city began to spring up, partly because of the falls and partly because of the Blue Grass region lying back of it. In this region we find the state capital, and here, along the roads, may be seen old mansions belonging to well-to-do descendants of the plucky men who came in by the Wilderness road or steered their flatboats down the Ohio. If we go back to Cumberland Gap, we shall see that many things have happened since Boone’s time. In the pass and on the Pinnacle, a thousand feet above on the north, are ridges of earth, which show where busy shovels threw up defenses in the Civil War; for armies passed this way between Kentucky and the valley of Tennessee, and made the gap an important point to be seized and held. The road through the gap is still about as bad a path as one could find. Near it on the east side of the mountains is yet to be seen a furnace of rough stones, built in those early days for smelting iron. But there is little else to remind us of that far-off time. To-day you may, if you choose, pass the mountains without climbing through the gap, for trains go roaring through a tunnel a mile long, while the echo of the screaming whistles rolls along the mountain sides. [Illustration: FIG. 59. THREE STATES MONUMENT, CUMBERLAND GAP] On the flat grounds just inside the gap is Middlesboro, a town of several thousand people, with wide streets and well-built shops and houses. Only a few miles away are coal mines from which thousands of tons of coal are dug, and this is one reason why the railroads are here. There are endless stores of fuel under these highlands, and men are breaking into the wilderness as fast as they can. But if we climb through the gap as Boone did, or ride a horse to the Pinnacle, we may look out upon the wonderful valley below, stretching off to the foot of the Great Smoky mountains, whose rugged tops carry our eyes far over into North Carolina. Or we may turn the other way and follow Boone’s trail to the Blue Grass. Down in the gap is a rough, weather-beaten pillar of limestone about three feet high and leaning as the picture shows (Fig. 59). It is almost, but not quite, where three states come together, for it is here, at the Cumberland Gap, that the corners of Virginia and Kentucky meet on the edge of Tennessee. CHAPTER XIII FRONTIER SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN Not long before the Revolution began some treacherous whites in the western country had murdered the whole family of the friendly Indian chief, Logan. This aroused the tribes and led to war. A piece of flat land runs out between the two streams where the Great Kanawha river joins the Ohio, in what is now West Virginia. Here, on a day early in October, 1774, twelve hundred frontiersmen were gathered under the command of an officer named Andrew Lewis.