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 The road that leads to the Natches was only a path that serpentined through these boundless forests, but the federal government have just opened a road, which is on the point of being finished, and will be one of the finest in the United States, both on account of its breadth and the solidity of the bridges constructed over the small rivers that cut through it; to which advantages it will unite that of being shorter than the other by a hundred miles. Thus we may henceforth, on crossing the western country, go in a carriage from Boston to New Orleans, a distance of more than two thousand miles.

{204} CHAP. XXII

Departure for Knoxville.—Arrival at Fort Blount.—Remarks upon the drying up of the Rivers in the Summer.—Plantations on the Road.—Fertility of the Soil.—Excursions in a Canoe on the River Cumberland.

On the 5th of September I set out from Nasheville for Knoxville, with Mr. Fisk, sent by the state of Tennessea to determine in a more correct manner, in concert with the commissaries of Virginia, the boundaries between the two states. We did not arrive till the 9th at Fort Blount, built upon the river Cumberland, about sixty miles from Nasheville; we stopped on the road with different friends of Mr. Fisk, among others, at the house of General Smith, one of the oldest inhabitants in the country, where he has resided sixteen or seventeen years. It is to him they are indebted for the best map of this state, which is found in the Geographical Atlas, published by Matthew Carey, bookseller, at Philadelphia. He confessed to me, notwithstanding, that this map, {205} taken several years ago, was in many respects imperfect. The General has a beautiful plantation cultivated in Indian wheat