Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 6).djvu/66

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66
BOONE'S WILDERNESS ROAD

cross the main Rockcastle River, and, therefore, was never on the waters of Salt or Green rivers, as claimed by some. A day or two's travel to the west or northwest would have brought him to the fertile lands of Lincoln or Madison County, his description of which would have left no doubt of his having passed the watershed between the Rockcastle, the Salt, and the rivers to the westward."[1]

Shoes formed an important item in the catalogue of necessaries for the early traveler's outfit on the first traveled ways in America. Already Walker's party, though they traveled largely by horse, had worn out the shoes with which they started, and on the eleventh of May under one of the great cliffs near Rockcastle River they set to work to make themselves new shoes out of elkskin. "When our Elk's Skin was prepared," writes Dr. Walker on the fourteenth, "we had lost every Awl that we brought out, and I made one with the Shank of an old Fishing hook, the other People made two of Horse Shoe Nails, and with

  1. Johnson's First Explorations of Kentucky (Filson Club Publications No. 13), p. 59.