Fort Blount was constructed about eighteen years ago, to protect the emigrants who came at that time to settle in Cumberland, against the attacks of the natives, who declared a perpetual war against them, in order to drive them out; but peace having been concluded with them, and the population being {208} much increased, they have been reduced to the impossibility of doing them farther harm, and the Fort has been destroyed. There now exists on this spot a beautiful plantation, belonging to Captain William Samson, with whom Mr. Fisk usually resides. During the two days that we stopped at his house, I went in a canoe up the river Cumberland for several miles. This mode of reconnoitring the natural productions still more various upon the bank of the rivers, is preferable to any other, especially when the rivers are like the latter, bounded by enormous rocks, which are so very steep, that scarcely any person ventures to ascend their lofty heights. In these excursions I enriched my collections with several seeds of trees and plants peculiar to the country, and divers other objects of natural history.
{209} CHAP. XXIII
Departure from Fort Blount to West Point, through the Wilderness.—Botanical excursions upon Roaring River.—Description of its Banks.—Saline productions found there.—Indian Cherokees.—Arrival at Knoxville.
On the 11th of September we went from Fort Blount to the house of a Mr. Blackborn, whose plantation, situated fifteen miles from this fortress, is the last that the whites possess on this side the line, that separates the territory of the United States from that of the Indian Cherokees. This line presents, as far as West Point upon the Clinch, a country uninhabited upward of eighty miles in breadth,
