exceedingly dangerous on the icy winter floods at night—when the shore could not be approached.
Such conditions as these gave origin to many of our land highways. Where pioneer homes were built beside a navigable river it was highly important to have a land thoroughfare leading back to the "old settlements" which could be traversed at all seasons. Many of our "river roads" came into existence, not because the valleys offered the easiest courses for land travel, but because pioneer settlements were made on river banks, and, as the rivers were often worthy of the common French name "Embarras," land courses were necessary. In the greater rivers this "homeward track," so to speak, frequently abandoned the winding valley and struck straight across the interior on the shortest available route.
The founding of Kentucky in the lower Ohio Valley offers a specific instance to illustrate these generalizations, and brings us to the subject of a thoroughfare which was of commanding importance in the old West. We have elsewhere dealt at length
