File:A part of the Cumberland Gap c. 1917.jpg

Identifier: ourcountryinstor00fran (find matches)
Title: Our country in story
Year: 1917 (1910s)
Authors: Franciscan Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration (La Crosse, Wis.)
Subjects: United States -- History America -- Discovery and exploration
Publisher: Chicago, New York, Scott, Foresman and company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
ave their sources.Beyond this lay a land of wondrous beauty, a land ofwooded hills and flowering glades, of grassy prairies andlofty woodland groves, of flowing rivers and brakes ofleafy cane. Here roamed the shaggy buffalo in countlessthousands. Here the elk and the deer abounded. Bears,too, as well as the wolf and panther, were numerous, whilethe canebrakes fairly teemed with feathered game. Well did it merit the name of hunters paradise asgiven it by one of its first explorers. The Indians, how-ever, called it Kentucky, which means among themeadows in their language. Kentucky was the common WEST TO THE MISSISSIPPI 209 hunting ground of the northern and the southern Indiantribes, but neither dared dwell therein. It was truly ano-mans land, crowded with game, but with not a wig-wam, not a hut in its entire extent. The various tribesof Indians who came to hunt there frequently quarreledand made war upon each other. Consequently, Kentuckyis also spoken of as the dark and bloody ground.
Text Appearing After Image:
A PART OF THE CUMBERLAND GAP TODAY No road, not even a trail, led from the seaboard acrossthe mountains into this wonderful houseless region inwhich thus far only the Indians and the wild beasts hadroamed and reigned undisturbed. Was there not at leastsome waterway or canyon through which the white manmight enter into this fair land ? Yes, there was. Wherethe boundary line between Kentucky and Tennesseetouches on the western extremity of Virginia is a deep,narrow passage through the Cumberland Mountains. By and by, hunters and Indian traders pushed farther 210 OUR COUNTRY IN STORY into the wilderness. In 1748 a party of Virginians cameupon the pass through which Indian war parties hadtramped a trail known as the warriors path. They gaveto the gap, as also to the mountains and the beautifulmountain stream rising near by, the name Cumberland,in honor of the English Duke of Cumberland. Other hunters soon passed through Cumberland Gapand far beyond it into the fairyland of Kentucky. Theyr

Note About Images