undations of the present city
of Nashville, at first named Nashborough by Robertson. * On the way,
Robertson had fallen in with a party of men and families bound for
Kentucky and had persuaded them to accompany his little band to the
Cumberland. Robertson's own wife and children, as well as the families
of his party, had been left to follow in the second expedition, which
was to be made by water under the command of Captain John Donelson.

* In honor of General Francis Nash, of North Carolina, who was
mortally wounded at Germantown, 1777.

The little fleet of boats containing the settlers, their families, and
all their household goods, was to start from Fort Patrick Henry, near
Long Island in the Holston River, to float down into the Tennessee and
along the 652 miles of that widely wandering stream to the Ohio, and
then to proceed up the Ohio to the mouth of the Cumberland and up the
Cumberland until Robertson's station should appear--a journey, as it
turned out, of some nine hundred miles through unknown country and on
waters at any rate for the greater part never before navigated by white
men.

"Journal of a voyage, intended by God's permission, in the good boat
Adventure" is the title of the log book in which Captain Donelson
entered the events of the four months' journey. Only a few pages endured
to be put into print: but those few tell a tale of hazard and courage
that seems complete. Could a lengthier narrative, even if enriched with
literary art and fancy, bring before us more vividly than do the simple
entries of Donelson's log the spirit of the men and the women who won
the West? If so little personal detail is recorded of the pioneer men of
that day that we must deduce what they were from what they did, what do
we know of their unfailing comrades, the pioneer women? Only that they
were there and that they shared in every test of courage and endurance,
save the march of troops and the hunt. Donelson's "Journal" therefore
has a special value, because in its terse account of Mrs. Jennings and
Mrs. Peyton it depicts unforgettably the quality of pioneer womanhood. *

* This Journal is printed in Ramsey's "Annals of Tennessee."

"December 22nd, 1779. Took our departure from the fort and fell down the
river to the mouth of Reedy Creek where we were stopped by the fall of
water and most excessive hard frost."

Perhaps part of the "Journal" was lost, or perhaps the "excessive hard
frost" of th