Note the commanding situation of this inner pass. Travel east along Pine Mountain or travel west, and you find no other water gap within a hundred miles. Through this that thin, toiling line of pioneer civilizers made its way, having scaled the great outer Cumberland wall some fifteen miles southward. But for this single geological fault, by which a water gap of the inner mountain was placed opposite a depression in the outer mountain, thus creating a continuous passway through both, the colonization of Kentucky, difficult enough even with this advantage, would have been indefinitely delayed, or from this side wholly impossible. Through this inner portal was traced in time the regular path of the pioneers, afterwards known as the Wilderness Road. On account of the travel over this road and the controlling nature of the site, there was long ago formed on the spot a little backwoods settlement, calling itself Pineville. It consisted of a single straggling line of cabins and shanties of logs on each side of a roadway, this road being the path of the pioneers. In the course of time it was made the county-seat. Being the county-seat, the way-side village, catching every traveller on foot or on horse or in wagons, began some years ago to make itself still better known as the scene of mountain feuds. The name of the town when uttered anywhere in Kentucky suggested but one thing--a blot on the civilization of the State, a mountain fastness where the human problem seems most intractable. A few such places have done more to foster the unfortunate impression which Kentucky has made upon the outside world than all the towns of the blue-grass country put together.