important, in so far as Europeans were concerned, ran from the Potomac valley to the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela. It was early known as Nemacolin's Path, from a Delaware Indian chieftain.
Nemacolin's Path, which was trod by many armies and might well be called the "bloody thoroughfare," was originally a trade route over which the Indians of the "Ohio country" were reached. When the first Ohio Company was formed in 1749 and a grant of land between the Monongahela and Kanawha was received from the king, the Virginian capitalists at the head of the company turned at once to this path through the lower Alleghanies as their route of approach. Their farthest outpost was erected at the mouth of Wills Creek on the Potomac—the point at which Nemacolin's Path left the Potomac. They there employed Captain Michael Cresap to blaze the course of the trail that their traders might not miss the course. Then drew on apace the remarkable series of events which mark this mountain thoroughfare as the most historic, perhaps, on this continent. The story of this trail and its cam-
