Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/286

 sufficient to furnish, by hunting, a subsistence for their families. However, sooner or later they will be obliged to yield. The division of Tennessea cannot be long before it takes place, whether under {249} the consideration of convenience, or the enterprising disposition of the Americans. It is commanded, on the one hand, by the boundaries that Nature herself has prescribed between the two countries, in separating them by the Cumberland Mountains; and on the other, by their commerce, which is wholly different, since Cumberland carries on its trade by the Ohio and Mississippi, while Holston does most by land with the seaports belonging to the Atlantic states, and has very little to do with New Orleans by the river Tennessea, and scarcely any with Cumberland and Kentucky. Under this consideration, Holston is, of all parts in the United States that are now inhabited, the most unfavourably situated, being on every side circumscribed by considerable tracts of country that produce the same provisions, and which are either more fertile or nearer to the borders of the sea.

What has been said relative to the manners of the inhabitants of Kentucky will apply, in a great measure to Tennessea, since they come, as the former {250} do, from North Carolina and Virginia: still the inhabitants of Tennessea do not yet enjoy that degree of independence which is remarked among those of Kentucky. They appear also not so religious, although, in the mean time, they are very strict observers of Sundays. We found but very few churches in Tennessea. Itinerant preachers wander, in summer, through the different countries, and preach in the woods, where the people collect together.