that his grandfather had travelled, to look for his own fortune in
a land which that old gentleman had passed over as worthless. At
the Cumberland River he took a canoe and drifted down the river
into the wild coal-swollen hills. Through the winter he froze,
starved and prospected, and a year later he was opening up a
region that became famous after his trust and inexperience had let
others worm out of him an interest that would have made him easy
for life.

With the vision of a seer, he was as innocent as Boone. Stripped
clean, he got out his map, such geological reports as he could
find and went into a studious trance for a month, emerging
mentally with the freshness of a snake that has shed its skin.
What had happened in Pennsylvania must happen all along the great
Alleghany chain in the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia,
Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee. Some day the avalanche must sweep
south, it must--it must. That he might be a quarter of a century
too soon in his calculations never crossed his mind. Some day it
must come.

Now there was not an ounce of coal immediately south-east of the
Cumberland Mountains--not an ounce of iron ore immediately north-
east; all the coal lay to the north-east; all of the iron ore to
the south-east. So said Geology. For three hundred miles there
were only four gaps through that mighty mountain chain--three at
water level, and one at historic Cumberland Gap which was not at
water level and would have to be tunnelled. So said Geography.

All railroads, to east and to west, would have to pass through
those gaps; through them the coal must be brought to the iron ore,