Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/21

Rh The journals of the elder Michaux "record the impressions of a man of unusual intelligence—a traveller in many lands, who had learned by long practice to use his eyes to good advantage and to write down only what they saw." A part of the value of these documents to a student of Western history consists in their accurate and succinct outline of the areas of colonization. The extent and boundaries of Michaux's travels enable us to map with considerable accuracy the limits of the settled regions—first, that from Pittsburg down the Ohio to just below Marietta; then, after passing a region without a town, between Gallipolis and Limestone (Maysville, Kentucky), the traveller enters the thickly occupied area of Kentucky, bounded on the south and west by the "barrens," into which emigration was beginning to creep. In the Illinois, Michaux's unfavorable comment upon the French habitants is in accord with that of other visitors of the same nationality; his travels therein show that the small French group were the only settlers, save a few venturesome Americans at Bellefontaine, and "Corne de Cerf." In East Tennessee, the outpost was Fort Southwest Point, where the Clinch and Holston meet; thence, a journey of a hundred and twenty miles through "the Wilderness" brought one to the frontier post of the Cumberland settlements, at Bledsoe's Lick. Upon Michaux's return, nearly a year later, the Cumberland frontier had extended, and Fort Blount had been built forty miles to the eastward as a protection for the ever-increasing number of travellers and pioneers. The western borders of Cumberland were also rapidly enlarging. Clarksville, on the Cumberland River at the mouth of the Red, had long been on the extreme border in this direction; but Michaux found daring settlements stretching