pressed for food, were compelled to leave the sick men in an
improvised camp and to hasten on, promising to send to their aid
the first Indian they should meet "who understood herbs." After
appalling hardships, they crossed the Tennessee and entered the
Nashville country, where the roads were good enough for coaches,
for they met two on the way. Thence Baily proceeded to Knoxville,
seeing, as he went, droves of cattle bound for the settlements of
west Tennessee. With his arrival at Knoxville, his journal ends
abruptly; but from other sources we learn that he sailed from New
York on his return to England in January, 1798. His interesting
record, however, remained unpublished until after his death in
1844.

Not only to Francis Baily but to scores of other travelers, even
those of unfriendly eyes, do modern readers owe a debt of
gratitude. These men have preserved a multitude of pictures and a
wealth of data which would otherwise have been lost. The men of
America in those days were writing the story of their deeds not
on parchment or paper but on the virgin soil of the wilderness.
But though the stage driver, the tavern keeper, and the burly
riverman left no description of the life of their highways and
their commerce, these visitors from other lands have bequeathed
to us their thousands of pages full of the enterprising life of
these pioneer days in the history of American commerce.



CHAPTER VII. The Birth Of The Steamboat

The crowds who welcomed the successive stages in the development