Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 6).djvu/187

 the Mississippi. Had it not been for a Kentucky in embryo in 1775–82, it is unquestionable that the confused story of the possession of that great river valley would have been worse confounded. The whirl of politics in Kentucky during the four decades after the Revolutionary War daunts even the student of modern Kentucky politics; and of one thing we may rest assured—had the State possessed a little less of the sober sense that came from Virginia through Cumberland Gap, it is certain the story of those wild days would not be as readable to modern Kentuckians as it is. It was more than fortunate for the young Republic that at the close of the Revolution there was a goodly population of expatriated Virginians and North Carolinians on the Mississippi, ready to press its claims there.

Thus we may briefly suggest the benefits which the older colonies received from the earliest settlers in Kentucky—and but for Boone's Road made by the Transylvania Company, it is exceedingly doubtful, as Boone wrote, whether the settlement of Kentucky would have been successfully