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Rh Forbes's Road, and Boone's Road—like the Indian and buffalo trails they followed—had their goal on the shores of this strategic waterway. The westward movement was by river valleys (a fact perhaps never sufficiently emphasized) and not until the Tennessee, Monongahela, Kanawha, and Kentucky Rivers were reached were any waters found to run parallel with the social movement itself.

When this goal of half a century was reached, then followed a half century of river travel that is being forgotten with remarkable rapidity. This cannot be realized until one marks out for himself the task, for instance, of learning how a keel-boat was made and how it was operated. The echo of the steersman's voice and the tuneful note of the bargeman's horn have faded from our valleys; and with this music has passed away a chapter of our history of vital importance and transcendant human interest.

For the sum and substance of Chapter III, the author is indebted, as the title indicates, to the painstaking labor of one Zadoc Cramer, a statistical hero of a time