e, strength of purpose, fortitude,
and moral power are there; they impress us at the first glance. At
twenty-eight he must have been a serious young man, little given to
laughter; indeed, spontaneity is perhaps the only good trait we miss in
studying his face. He was a thinker who had not yet found his purpose--a
thinker in leash, for at this time James Robertson could neither read
nor write.

At Watauga, Robertson lived for a while in the cabin of a man named
Honeycut. He chose land for himself and, in accordance with the custom
of the time, sealed his right to it by planting corn. He remained to
harvest his first crop and then set off to gather his family and some of
his friends together and escort them to the new country. But on the way
he missed the trail and wandered for a fortnight in the mountains. The
heavy rains ruined his powder so that he could not hunt; for food he had
only berries and nuts. At one place, where steep bluffs opposed him, he
was obliged to abandon his horse and scale the mountain side on foot. He
was in extremity when he chanced upon two huntsmen who gave him food and
set him on the trail. If this experience proves his lack of the hunter's
instinct and the woodsman's resourcefulness which Boone possessed, it
proves also his special qualities of perseverance and endurance which
were to reach their zenith in his successful struggle to colonize and
hold western Tennessee. He returned to Watauga in the following spring
(1771) with his family and a small group of colonists. Robertson's wife
was an educated woman and under her instruction he now began to study.

Next year a young Virginian from the Shenandoah Valley rode on down
Holston Valley on a hunting and exploring trip, and loitered at Watauga.
Here he found not only a new settlement but an independent government
in the making; and forthwith he determined to have a part in both.
This young Virginian had already shown the inclination of a political
colonist, for in the Shenandoah Valley he had, at the age of nineteen,
laid out the town of New Market (which exists to this day) and had
directed its municipal affairs and invited and fostered its clergy. This
young Virginian--born on September 23, 1745, and so in 1772 twenty-seven
years of age--was John Sevier, that John Sevier whose monument now
towers from its site in Knoxville to testify of both the wild and the
great deeds of old Tennessee's beloved knight. Like Robertson, Sevier
hastened home