ortant
pathway from the same region led, by way of Carlisle, Bedford, and
Ligonier, to the Ohio. The "Highland Trail" the Indian traders called
it, for it kept well on the watershed dividing the Allegheny tributaries
on the north from those of the Monongahela on the south.

Farther to the south the scene shows a change, for the Atlantic plain
widens considerably. The Potomac River, the James, the Pedee, and the
Savannah flow through valleys much longer than those of the northern
rivers. Here in the South commerce was carried on mainly by shallop and
pinnace. The trails of the Indian skirted the rivers and offered for
trader and explorer passageway to the West, especially to the towns of
the Cherokees in the southern Alleghanies or Unakas; but the waterways
and the roads over which the hogsheads of tobacco were rolled (hence
called "rolling roads") sufficed for the needs of the thin fringes of
population settled along the rivers. Trails from Winchester in Virginia
and Frederick in Maryland focused on Cumberland at the head of the
Potomac. Beyond, to the west, the finger tips of the Potomac interlocked
closely with the Monongahela and Youghiogheny, and through this network
of mountain and river valley, by the "Shades of Death" and Great
Meadows, coiled Nemacolin's Path to the Ohio. Even today this ancient
route is in part followed by the Baltimore and Ohio and the Western
Maryland Railway.

A bird's-eye view of the southern Alleghanies shows that, while the
Atlantic plain of Virginia and the Carolinas widens out, the mountain
chains increase in number, fold on fold, from the Blue Ridge to the
ragged ranges of the Cumberlands. Few trails led across this manifold
barrier. There was a connection at Balcony Falls between the James River
and the Great Kanawha; but as a trade route it was of no such value
to the men of its day as the Chesapeake and Ohio system over the
same course is to us. As in the North, so in the South, trade avoided
obstacles by taking a roundabout, and often the longest route. In order
to double the extremity of the Unakas, for instance, the trails reached
down by the Valley of Virginia and New River to the uplands of the
Tennessee, and here, near Elizabethton, they met the trails leading up
the Broad and the Yadkin rivers from Charleston, South Carolina.

To the west rise the somber heights of Cumberland Gap. Through this
portal ran the famous "Warrior's Path," known to wandering hunters, the
"trail o