Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 6).djvu/62

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62
BOONE'S WILDERNESS ROAD

Ohio River pilot affirms that in his boyhood a burned trunk of a sycamore stood on his father's farm on the Little Muskingum, into which he has frequently driven a horse, turned it about, and come out again. General Harmar found on the Ohio a buttonwood tree forty-two feet in circumference, which held forty men within its trunk.

On the seventh of April Dr. Walker writes: "It snowed most of the day. In the Evening our dogs caught a large He Bear, which before we could come up to shoot him had wounded a dog of mine, so that he could not Travel, and we carried him on Horseback, till he recovered." On the thirteenth the party reached "Cave Gap," which Walker named Cumberland Gap in honor of the "bloody Duke," the hero of Culloden. "Just at the foot of the Hill is a Laurel Thicket. . . On the South side is a plain Indian Road. on the top of the Ridge are Laurel Trees marked with crosses, others Blazed and several Figures on them. . . This Gap may be seen at a considerable distance, and there is no other, that I know of, except one about two miles to the North of it, which