ee, a portion of country at that
time supposed to be within the limits of Virginia. The Bledsoes, with the
Shelbys, settled themselves about twelve miles above the Island Flats. The
beauty of that mountainous region attracted others, who impelled by the
same spirit of adventure, and pride in being the first to explore the
wilderness, came to join them in establishing the colony. They cheerfully
ventured their property and lives, enduring the severest privations in
taking possession of their new homes, influenced by the love of
independence, equality, and religious freedom. The most dearly-prized
rights of man had been threatened in the oppressive system adopted by Great
Britain towards her colonies; her agents and the colonial magistrates
manifested all the insolence of authority; and individuals who had suffered
from their aggressions bethought themselves of a country beyond the
mountains, in the midst of primeval forests, where no laws existed save the
law of Nature--no magistrate except those selected by themselves; where
full liberty of conscience, of speech, and of action prevailed. Yet, almost
in the first year of their settlement, they formed a written code of
regulations by which they agreed to be governed; each man signing his name
thereto. The pioneer settlements of the Holston and Watanga, formed by
parties of emigrants from neighboring provinces, traveling together through
the wilderness, were not, in their constitution, unlike those of New Haven
and Hartford; but among them was no godly Hooker, no learned and
heavenly-minded Haynes. As from the first, however, they were exposed to
the continual depredations and assaults of their savage neighbors, who
looked with jealous eyes upon the approach of the white men, and waged a
war of extermination against them, it was perhaps well that there were
among them few men of letters. The rifle and the axe, their only weapons of
civilization, suited better the perils they encountered from the fierce and
marauding Shawnees, Chickamangas, Creeks, and Cherokees, than would the
brotherly address of William Penn, or the pious discourses of Roger
Williams.

During the first year, not more than fifty families had crossed the
mountains; but others came with each revolving season to reinforce the
little settlement, until its population swelled to hundreds; increasing to
thousands within ten or fifteen years, notwithstanding the frequent and
terrible inroads upon their numbers of