The route lay wholly west of the Alleghenies and the travellers had to climb no such mighty barrier as that which stretched between the Atlantic and the west. But the land steadily rose, and day by day the sunset burned across increasing hills. The two passed Nashville--a thriving town growing like a weed--and came at last to the Kentucky border and the crest of the watershed between the Cumberland and the Green river. Here, cutting across the headwaters of a deep, narrow creek, ice cold and crystal clear, filled with the dusky shadows of darting trout, they stumbled into the deep-cut trail travelled for centuries by Indian warriors bound south from beyond the Ohio to wage war on tribes living along the Atlantic and the Gulf. This trail was nearly a thousand miles long; one branch started from the mouth of the Mississippi and the other from the Virginia seaboard, and the two met in southern Kentucky, crossed the Ohio, and followed the Miami toward the western end of Lake Erie. Jack had only to follow it to reach his destination. Like all Indian pathways, the trail clung to the highest ground, following the route that was driest in rain, clearest of snow in winter and of brush and leaves in summer, and least subject to forest fires. Much of it was originally lined out by buffalo, which found the way of least resistance as instinctively as the red men, but long stretches of it had been made by the Indians alone. The buffalo trail was broad and deep and was worn five or six feet into the soil; the Indian trail was in few places more than a foot deep and was so narrow that it was impossible to see more than a rod along it. No one could traverse it without breaking the twigs and branches of the dense bushes that overhung it on either side, leaving a record that to the keen eye of the savage and of the woodsman was eloquent to the number who had passed and the time of their passage. No one who once travelled its vistaless stretches could fail to understand the ease with which ambushes and surprises could be effected. Though the trail clung to high ground the exigencies of destination compelled it in places to go down into the valleys. It had to descend to cross the Kentucky river and to descend again into the valley of the Licking as it approached the Ohio at Cincinnati. In such places it had often been overflowed and obliterated and its route was far less definite. However, this no longer mattered, for in all such parts it had long been incorporated into the white man’s road. Much of it, however, still endured and was to endure for more than a hundred years. Beyond the Ohio it climbed once more and followed the crest of the divide between Great and Little Miami rivers to Dayton, Piqua, and Wapakoneta.