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 CHAPTER III

ITH the close of Pontiac's Rebellion and the passing away of the war clouds which had hung so long over the West, ten thousand eyes turned longingly across the Alleghenies and Blue Ridge. War with all its horrors had yet brought something of good, for never before had the belief that a splendidly fertile empire lay to the westward taken such a hold upon the people of Virginia. Nothing more was needed but the positive assurance of large areas of good land, and a way to reach it. It was ten years after the close of Pontiac's war before both of these conditions were fulfilled.

First came the definite assurance that the meadows of Kentucky were what Gist and others had reported them to be. The Proclamation of 1763, forbidding western settlement, did not forbid hunting in the