Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 6).djvu/194

 important years of its existence Boone's Road was only what Boone made it—a blazed foot-path westward. It was but the merest foot-path from 1774 to 1792, while thousands floundered over its uncertain track to lay the rude foundations of civilization in the land to which it led. "There are roads that make a man lose faith," writes Mr. Allen; "It is known that the more pious companies [of pioneers] as they traveled along, would now and then give up in despair, sit down, raise a hymn, and have prayers said before they could go farther." There was probably not a more desperate pioneer road in America than this. The mountains to be crossed, the rivers and swamps the traveler encountered, were as difficult to overcome as any on Braddock's Road; and Boone's Road was very much longer, even if measured from its technical starting-point—the Watauga settlement.

As early as 1779 the Virginia Assembly took up the subject of a western highway, and commissioners were appointed to explore the region on both sides of the mountains, to choose a course for a road-