..."
Past the camps of the Chickamaugans--who were retreating farther
and farther down the twisting flood, seeking a last standing
ground in the giant caves by the Tennessee--these white voyagers
had steered their pirogues. Near Robertson's station, where they
landed after having traversed the triangle of the three great
rivers which enclose the larger part of western Tennessee, stood
a crumbling trading house marking the defeat of a Frenchman who
had, one time, sailed in from the Ohio to establish an outpost of
his nation there. At a little distance were the ruins of a rude
fort cast up by the Cherokees in the days when the redoubtable
Chickasaws had driven them from the pleasant shores of the
western waters. Under the towering forest growth lay vast burial
mounds and the sunken foundations of walled towns, telling of a
departed race which had once flashed its rude paddles and had its
dream of permanence along the courses of these great waterways.
Now another tribe had come to dream that dream anew. Already its
primitive keels had traced the opening lines of its history on
the face of the immemorial rivers.
Chapter IX. King's Mountain
About the time when James Robertson went from Watauga to fling
out the frontier line three hundred miles farther westward, the
British took Savannah.
Pages:
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194