As early as 1714, M. Charleville, a French trader, came, and tarried for a time near the salt spring, known thereafter as the French Lick. In 1775, Timothy De Monbreun, a native of France, visited the spring, and later settled near the site of Nashville. Occasionally adventurous hunters and trappers passed down the valley. In 1778, a man of singular courage and gigantic stature named Spencer came with a party from Kentucky in search of homes and fortune, and settled near Bledsoe’s Lick, north of the Cumberland. They planted a small field of corn. Spencer’s companions soon became discouraged and returned to Kentucky, but this self-reliant hunter, undismayed by the solitude of the wilderness and the fear of the crafty Cherokee, refused to leave his new home in the lonely forest, and passed the long winter there, with only a great hollow sycamore tree as a shelter. The story of the founding of Nashville is full of heroic incidents. It reads like a romance. About ten years had elapsed since the stout-hearted pioneers of Virginia and the Carolinas had pushed their way westward through the blue ridges of the Alleghanies, and planted an independent colony upon the banks of the Watauga River. Its master spirits, John Sevier, James Robertson and Isaac and Evan Shelby would have been men of mark in any community. From this parent hive, already grown into a strong and prosperous settlement, a new colony of two hundred and more hardy riflemen and pioneers, in the fall of 1779, set out upon a far journey to the west, under the leadership of James Robertson. Allured by the wonderful stories of the beauty and fertility of the Cumberland Valley, they determined to seek there new homes. It was an heroic venture, unsurpassed in the history of the march of western civilization. No military force blazed a way for them. High mountain ranges, deep and unknown rivers, hundreds of miles of dense forest, lay before them. The dread of the crafty savage, upon whose hunting-grounds they were encroaching, did not deter them. Bidding farewell to their friends at Watauga they struck out upon the wilderness trail of Daniel Boone for the Far West. They passed through the gap in the Cumberland Mountains, across the headwaters of the Cumberland River, and still westward across the rivers and valleys of Central and Southern Kentucky, until, after weary weeks of marching, through storm and snow and ice, they finally reached the old French Lick on Christmas Day, 1779. [Illustration: JAMES ROBERTSON.] The wives and families of this advance-guard of the frontier, unable to endure the hardships of the march, were sent in boats and canoes down the Holston and Tennessee rivers. Captain John Donelson was in command, a man of rare courage and judgment. His handsome young daughter, Rachel, one of the voyagers, afterwards became mistress of the White House as the wife of President Jackson.