Cherokee hunter than his bow and arrow and his dead-fall would have secured during a month of toilsome hunting. Other advantages resulted from it to the whites. They became thus acquainted with the great avenues leading through the hunting grounds and to the occupied country of the neighboring tribes--an important circumstance in the condition of either war or peace. Further, the traders were an exact thermometer of the pacific or hostile intention and feelings of the Indians with whom they traded. Generally, they were foreigners, most frequently Scotchmen, who had not been long in the country, or upon the frontier, who, having experienced none of the cruelties, depredation or aggressions of the Indians, cherished none of the resentment and spirit of retaliation born with, and everywhere manifested, by the American settler. Thus, free from animosity against the aborigines, the trader was allowed to remain in the village where he traded unmolested, even when its warriors were singing the war song or brandishing the war club, preparatory to an invasion or massacre of the whites. Timely warning was thus often given by a returning packman to a feeble and unsuspecting settlement, of the perfidy and cruelty meditated against it. "This gainful commerce was, for a time, engrossed by the traders; but the monopoly was not allowed to continue long. Their rapid accumulations soon excited the cupidity of another class of adventurers; and the hunter, in his turn, became a co-pioneer with the trader, in the march of civilization to the wilds of the West. As the agricultural population approached the eastern base of the Alleghanies, the game became scarce, and was to be found by severe toil in almost inaccessible recesses and coves of the mountain. Packmen, returning from their trading expeditions, carried with them evidences, not only of the abundance of game across the mountains, but of the facility with which it was procured. Hunters began to accompany the traders to the Indian towns; but, unable to brook the tedious delay of procuring peltries by traffic, and impatient of restraint, they struck boldly into the wilderness, and western-like, to use a western phrase, set up for themselves. The reports of their return, and of their successful enterprise, stimulated other adventurers to a similar undertaking. 'As early as 1748 Doctor Thomas Walker, of Virginia, in company with Colonels Wood, Patton and Buchanan, and Captain Charles Campbell, and a number of hunters, made an exploring tour upon the western waters. Passing Powel's valley, he gave the name of 'Cumberland' to the lofty range of mountains on the west. Tracing this range in a south-western direction, he came to a remarkable depression in the chain: through this he passed, calling it 'Cumberland Gap.' On the western side of the range he found a beautiful mountain stream, which he named 'Cumberland River,' all in honor of the Duke of Cumberland, then prime minister of England.[11] These names have ever