Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 6).djvu/93

 ization) was to begin the occupation of the empire it had nominally secured. Of this Boone writes modestly that he was "solicited by a number of North Carolina gentlemen, that were about purchasing the lands lying on the south side of the Kentucky River, from the Cherokee Indians, to attend their treaty at Watauga, in March, 1775, to negotiate with them, and mention the boundaries of the purchase. This I accepted, and at the request of the same gentlemen undertook to mark out a road in the best passage from the settlement through the wilderness to Kentucky, with such assistance as I thought necessary to employ for such an important undertaking."

As in the case of Nemacolin's Path across the Alleghenies, so now a second westward Indian pathway was blazed for white man's use; and if the Transylvania Colony can in no other respect be said to have been successful, it certainly conferred an inestimable good upon Virginia and North Carolina and the nation, when it marked out through the hand of Boone the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. From Watauga the path led up to the Gap, where