Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 6).djvu/205

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AT THE END OF BOONE'S ROAD
205

sible," Mr. Allen continues, "to come upon this road without pausing, or to write of it without a tribute."

The mountainous portions of Boone's old road are the picturesque as well as the historic portions. And come what may, this zig-zag pathway through Powell's Valley and Cumberland Gap can never be effaced—never forgotten. The footsteps of the tens of thousands who have passed over it, exhausted though each pilgrim may have been, have left a trace that a thousand years cannot eradicate. And so long as the print of those weary feet can be seen in dark Powell's Valley, on Cumberland Gap, and beside Yellow and Rockcastle Creeks, so long will there be a memorial left to perpetuate the heroism of the first Kentuckians—and the memory of what the Middle West owes to Virginia and her neighbors. For when all is said this track from tide water through Cumberland Gap must remain a monument to the courage and patriotism of the people of old Virginia and North Carolina.

Cumberland Gap, "that high-swung gateway through the mountain" stands as