As early as 1760, the country west of the Cumberland mountains was considered by the inhabitants of Carolina and Virginia, as involved in something of the same obscurity which lay over the American continent, after its first discovery by Columbus. Those who spread their sails to cross the sea, and find new skies, a new soil, and men in a new world, were not deemed more daring by their brethren at home, than the few hardy adventurers, who struck into the pathless forests stretching along the frontier settlements of the western country, were estimated by their friends and neighbors. Even the most informed and intelligent, where information and intelligence were cultivated, knew so little of the immense extent of country, now designated as the "Mississippi Valley," that a book, published near the year 1800, in Philadelphia or New York, by a writer of talent and standing, speaks of the _many_ mouths of the Missouri, as entering the Mississippi _far below the Ohio_. The simple inmates of cabins, in the remote region bordering on the new country, knew still less about it; as they had not penetrated its wilderness, and were destitute of that general knowledge which prevents the exercise of the exaggerations of vague conjecture. There was, indeed, ample room for the indulgence of speculation upon the features which the unexplored land was characterized. Its mountains, plains, and streams, animals, and men, were yet to be discovered and named. It might be found the richest land under the sun, exhaustless in fertility, yielding the most valuable productions, and unfailing in its resources. It was possible it would prove a sterile desert. Imagination could not but expatiate in this unbounded field and unexplored wilderness; and there are few persons entirely secure from the influence of imagination. The real danger attending the first exploration of a country filled with wild animals and savages; and the difficulty of carrying a sufficient supply of ammunition to procure food, during a long journey, necessarily made on foot, had prevented any attempt of the kind. The Alleghany mountains had hitherto stood an unsurmounted barrier between the Atlantic country and the shores of the beautiful Ohio.