little wonder that emigrants from Virginia preferred the long but better-known land route, through Powell's Valley and Cumberland Gap to the Braddock Road and the Ohio River. At a later date, however, the difficulties of river passage were materially decreased and the Ohio became the great outward emigrant route.
But for the return traffic from Kentucky to Virginia, there was no comparison between the ease of the land route and the water route. Mr. Speed affirms that the road through Cumberland Gap "was the only practicable route for all return travel."[1] Of course for a long period there were no exports from Kentucky, as hardly enough could be raised to feed the multitude of immigrants; but when at last Kentucky strode to the front with its great harvests of wheat and tobacco, the Mississippi and Ohio ports received them.
The East received comparatively little benefit, in a commercial way, from Boone's
- ↑ Speed: The Wilderness Road, p. 30. Cf. American Pioneer, vol. ii, pp. 219–220; St. Clair Papers, vol. ii, p. 246; Life of Nathaniel Massie, p. 121; Collins's History of Kentucky, vol. ii, p. 327.
