Captain Smyth, as already described (following his tour as he gives it), landed at Norfolk, saw Williamsburg, Richmond and Petersburg, and from Petersburg set out for Halifax, in North Carolina. From Halifax he took the Hillsborough Road and thence passed to Camden, in South Carolina, coming back to Hillsborough as a base from whence to proceed to Kentucky, better known at that time as Henderson’s Settlement. Smyth saw Judge Henderson[B] in North Carolina, and had much talk with him, thought him an extraordinary man, and became curious to see the wonderful country beyond the Holston and the Big Sandy, the proprietary regions of Western Virginia. “From the conversation I had with this very extraordinary person, Mr. Henderson, I entertained a strong inclination to pay a visit to his domain; which must certainly afford a large field for speculation and enterprise, being situated in the very heart of the continent of America, and in a great degree precluded from the general intercourse of the rest of mankind, being likewise several hundred miles from any other settlement.” This was before the establishment of the county of Kentucky in 1776. After that year the number of emigrants from the coast country was so large it is almost a matter of surprise that anybody was left in Virginia east of the mountains. Smyth made a rather difficult journey from Hillsborough to the North Carolina line. That was the back road in those times, which the Southern Railway has done so much to develop in recent years. In 1772 the road was scarcely a blazed path through the woods. Near the North Carolina line Captain Smyth stayed for about ten days at the upper and the lower Sawra Towns, old Indian settlements south of Dan River. “The whole settlement of the Lower Sawra Towns, being a vast body of excellent and most valuable land containing 33,000 acres, of which more than 9,000 are exceedingly rich low grounds, is the property of Mr. Farley, of the island of Antigua, in the West Indies. About the year 1761 the whole of this extensive tract of land was sold to Mr. Maxwell, who concluded the purchase without seeing it. In the spring of the ensuing year he went out to view his new estate. It happened just at that time that a prodigious flood in the Dan had overspread the whole of the lowgrounds on the river, of which near 10,000 acres were covered by the inundation. This extraordinary circumstance and very awful appearance astonished and intimidated Mr. Maxwell, who on his return to Westover, expressing dissatisfaction with his purchase, the £500 was returned to him. That same year Mr. Farley, of Antigua, being on a visit in Virginia, immediately offered £1,000 for the purchase, without ever having seen it also; which offer was as readily accepted. In the year 1769 Mr. Farley’s son, James Farley, came into Virginia, and ventured out that distance in the back country to view the estate. After some difficulty in removing accidental settlers, he divided the