They were bringing their household goods, their slaves, and their domestic animals with them. All were armed and ready to defend their possessions and their views with vigor. The Quakers, in serene self-denial, stood for the moral doctrine of freedom in body and mind and spirit. They wore plain clothes and used plain speech and practised plain living. The common cause of keeping their scalps intact had linked these different peoples together for protection on the trip, just as the prospect of making a better living had driven them both northward through Cumberland Gap. Oh, Cumberland Gap! That "high-swung gateway of the mountains!" What boy has not in fancy joined Daniel Boone when he held in his hand the key to this wondrous portal? When that famous frontiersman opened the gates and started on its course the most tremendous tide of emigration this continent had ever seen, and when as scout he went before his countrymen, he had more adventures than ever before fell to the lot of any one pioneer as he blazed for them the trail through the Middle West. The spunky little settlements around the fort at Watauga, on the eastern side of the mountains, continually fought the Indians to keep them from extending their tribal lines north. By this bravery the Gap was kept open for travel. Henderson's land company secured home acres. Boone pointed out the acres and by the force of his splendid personality kept the scattered settlers loyal to the United States and to one another during the trying days of the Revolution. Nothing could be better than the view from Cumberland Gap. Nothing much worse than the path through it. Rough, miry, stony, over-flowed, washed out, precipitous--all this and more! Every fault that a road could have this one displayed. Yet because it was the only road nature had cut through the mountains, Watauga guarded it and Boone's followers trod it as never road was traveled before. Between 1775 and 1790 seventy thousand people sweated in the jagged up-hill climb to its sixteen hundred feet of height, paused for a moment to look at the sides of the mountains towering another thousand feet above the Gap, and then slid and scrambled down on the Kentucky side. In 1816 they were still coming over this wilderness road. Doby was tired of the twice-told tales of its hardships. He wanted to make his rest-times as pleasant as possible, so on the second night he left the wagging gray-beards and in sheer exuberance he tried to run down a rabbit in the glade where they were encamped. All work and talk broke off to see him do it. The younger the rabbit the easier to catch. With every day's growth of its hopping-muscles it waxes more enduring. Doby, having picked an older rabbit than he thought, was hard pressed to tire the lively creature out. He called for help. The older men instantly forbade the younger ones to join the hunt. The boy who began it must finish it to prove his right to the game.