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into service as taverns. Indian fords, where the water had oft run red with blood in border frays, were spanned with solid bridges. Ancient towns, which had been comparatively unknown to the world, but which were of sufficient commercial magnetism to attract the great road to them, became, on the morrow, cities of consequence in the world. As the century ran into its second and third decades, the Cumberland Road received an increasingly heterogeneous population. Wagons of all descriptions, from the smallest to the great "mountain ships" which creaked down the mountain sides and groaned off into the setting sun, formed a marvelous frieze upon it. Fast expresses, too realistically, perhaps, called "shakeguts," tore along through valley and over hill with important messages of state. Here, the broad highway was blocked with herds of cattle trudging eastward to the markets, or westward to the meadow lands beyond the mountains. Gay coaches of four and six horses, whose worthy drivers were known by name even to the statesmen who were often their passengers, rolled on to the hospitable taverns where the com-