Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 6).djvu/19

 CHAPTER I

O English colony in America looked upon the central West with such jealous eye as Virginia. The beautiful valley of the Oyo—the Indian exclamation for "Beautiful"—which ran southwesterly through the great forests of the continent's interior was early claimed as the sole possession of the Virginians. The other colonies were hemmed in by prescribed boundary lines, definitely outlined in their royal charters. New York was bounded by Lake Erie and the Allegheny and thought little of the West. The Pennsylvanian colony was definitely bounded by the line which is the western boundary line of that commonwealth today. Carolina's extremity stopped at thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. Virginia's western boundary was not defined; hence the West was hers.