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24 these same rivers, but more frequently on the trails, white traders ventured westward with their bright wares—and the western land became known among a much larger coterie than before. The tales of the traders, together with dreams of commercial exploitation led to the first careful exploration of the interior of the continent by such men as Walker, Gist, Boone, and Carver, to whom these narrow "roads of iron," as the Jesuit missionaries in the north called the rough Indian trails, were shining paths to an El Dorado. The first two great roads built westward were opened under the direction of trading companies: the road from the Potomac to the Ohio by Captain Cresap, for the first Ohio Company, and the road from Virginia to Kentucky by Daniel Boone, for the Transylvania Company. And these were at first only blazed and widened Indian thoroughfares which had been used from times prehistoric.

The missionaries, too, were great explorers, and they knew the Indian thoroughfares perhaps better even than the traders; at least they knew some that white men had never traveled before them.