To protect the
settlers, therefore, he journeyed into the Illinois country to
purchase cabin rights from Clark, but there he was evidently
convinced that the site on the Cumberland would be found to lie
within North Carolina. He returned to Watauga to lead a party of
settlers into the new territory, towards which they set out in
October. After crossing the mountain chain through Cumberland
Gap, the party followed Boone's road--the Warriors' Path--for
some distance and then made their own trail southwestward through
the wilderness to the bluffs on the Cumberland, where they built
cabins to house them against one of the coldest winters ever
experienced in that county. So were laid the first foundations of
the present city of Nashville, at first named Nashborough by
Robertson.* On the way, Robertson had fallen in with a party of
men and families bound for Kentucky and had persuaded them to
accompany his little band to the Cumberland. Robertson's own wife
and children, as well as the families of his party, had been left
to follow in the second expedition, which was to be made by water
under the command of Captain John Donelson.
* In honor of General Francis Nash, of North Carolina, who was
mortally wounded at Germantown, 1777.
The little fleet of boats containing the settlers, their
families, and all their household goods, was to start from Fort
Patrick Henry, near Long Island in the Holston River, to float
down into the Tennessee and along the 652 miles of that widely
wandering stream to the Ohio, and then to proceed up the Ohio to
the mouth of the Cumberland and up the Cumberland until
Robertson's station should appear--a journey, as it turned out,
of some nine hundred miles through unknown country and on waters
at any rate for the greater part never before navigated by white
men.
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