westward to that mighty empire to which Nemacolin's Path and Braddock's rough road led the way a century and a half ago. A century had proved that the West could not be held by water-ways. The question then was, could it be held by land approaches? The ringing of woodmen's axes, the clinking of surveyors' chains, the rattle of tavern signs and the rumble of stage coach wheels, thundered the answer—Yes!
So patriotic and so thoroughly American is the Central West today, that it is also difficult to realize by what a slender thread it hung to the fragile republic east of the mountains, during the two decades succeeding the Revolutionary War. The whole world looked upon the East and West as realms distinct as Italy and France, and for the same geographical reason. It looked for a partition of the alleged "United States" among the powers as confidently as we today look for the partition of China, and for very similar reasons. England and France and Spain had their well defined "spheres of influence," and the populated and flourishing center of the then West, Kentucky, became, and was for
