The youngest great town of the southern mountain region was started on an old cotton plantation in 1871, thirty-four years before the writing of these lines. The people knew that in Alabama as well as in Tennessee coal and iron are found close together. So men built an iron town and called it, after one of the greatest furnace towns in the world, Birmingham. It is a noisy, busy place, with wide streets, swift electric cars, and blazing furnaces. To see it grow is like watching a new Pittsburg rise up in the heart of the South. From the Berkshire country at the north to the southern end of the Appalachians, there are to-day thriving towns and fertile fields. No longer does the mountain wall cut off the products of the West from the markets of the East. Yet hardly a hundred years ago the eastern strip of country was practically shut off from the whole territory drained by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Indian trails and rough roads were the only means of communication between the two sections. Great as are the natural resources of both regions, their prosperity has been bound up in the development of roads and railways, and is due in large measure to the energy, foresight, and self-sacrifice of those who crossed the barrier and made it easy for others to follow them. INDEX Adams, Charles Francis, cited, 7 Adams, John Quincy, 100 Adirondacks, 32 Albany, N.Y., 6, 10, 15, 16 Alexander, Mt., 130 Alexandria, Va., 41, 86 Allegheny Front, 74, 78, 80, 82 Allegheny Portage Railway, 75, 76, 80 Allegheny river, 111 Allentown, Pa., 79 Altoona, Pa., 77; description of, 81 Amsterdam, N.Y., 20 Ann, Fort, 32 Annapolis, Md., 88 Antietam, 132 Appalachians, southern, 174 “Arks” on the Susquehanna, 41 Arnold, Benedict, 37 Atkinson, Gov. W. G., 178 Atlanta, Ga., 174–180 Auburn, N.Y., 57 Bald Eagle valley, 80 Baltimore, Md., 53, 86, 101; growth of, 107 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 99, 101, 102, 110 Barges on the Ohio, 116, 118 Barton, Clara, cited, 82 Bay Road, Mass., 4 Bedford, Pa., 71, 77 Bemis Heights, 38 Bennington, Vt., 38 Berkshires, 5; railway through, 9, 10 Bethlehem, Pa., 79 Binghamton, N.Y., 52 Birmingham, Ala., 181 Black Rock (Buffalo), 47 “Blackbeard,” 130 Blockhouse at Pittsburg, 112 Blount College, 170 Blue Grass country, 127, 151, 166 Blue mountain, 79 Blue Ridge mountains, 88, 130 Boone, Daniel, early life, 144; training, 145; portrait, 145; moves to North Carolina, 146; serves with Braddock, 146; camps in Kentucky, 147; visits Cumberland Gap, 148; founds Boonesborough, 148; buys lands of the Indians, 149; marks out the Wilderness road, 149 Boonesborough, 148 Boston, Mass., 1, 2, 7, 12 Braddock, General, 69, 90, 91, 146 Braddock, Pa., 83 Brant, Joseph, 33 Bristol, Tenn., 134 British, in New York, 32; in the Ohio country, 156