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