As the explorers prepared to descend into the valley, they noticed a few miles away, at the north, a slight smoke curling up from among the trees near the banks of what is now known as Boone's Creek, a small tributary of the Watauga. Was it from the encampment of some Indian hunter, or the cabin of a white man who had settled there since the visit of Boone, five years before? With the caution of old hunters they descended the mountain and approached the spot whence the smoke issued. It was a log hut, newly built, and around it, in the stacked corn and the cattle browsing near, were evidences of a white inhabitant. He was a former comrade of Boone, his companion during his visit here in 1760, and he had returned during the previous summer and built a home for his family. His name was William Bean, and he was the first white settler west of the Alleghanies.
The explorers were hospitably entertained by Bean and his wife, but, after a few days spent in piloting Robertson about the valley, Boone set out on his first long tramp through Kentucky. Robertson remained behind, and was not long in deciding that he had happened upon the right spot for a settlement. This decided on, he set about making preparations for the incoming settlers. Selecting a spot of fertile soil, he broke it up and planted a crop of corn,—enough to carry the expected colonists through another season,—meanwhile making his home with Bean, the hospitable first settler.
It was autumn before his corn was gathered, and the rainy season had set in when he started to return to North Carolina. He had carefully husbanded his small stock of powder and lead, and with what remained, and enough parched corn and jerked venison to last, with what game he might kill, for ten or more days, he set out on his solitary journey homeward. There soon came on a heavy rain, which drenched him completely, and, worse than this, wet through and through every ounce of his powder. Wrapping his blanket closely about him, he tried to dry the powder with the warmth of his naked flesh; but all his efforts were unavailing: the precious grains had totally lost the power of ignition. Reduced now to his prepared food, he determined to push on with all speed, and, before his supply should be exhausted, reach the settlements on the other side of the mountains.
On the westerly part of the route the explorers had neglected to blaze the way, and now, day after day, the sun was hidden by thick clouds. Robertson had no difficulty so long as he could take his bearings by the course of the Watauga, but when he had passed the sources of that stream he was all at sea, with neither sun nor star nor compass to guide him. He scanned the heavens with anxious eye, but they disclosed no glimpse of the blessed sun: all was mist and rain by day, and by night the blackest of darkness. Tired, drenched, bewildered, he wandered aimlessly on, lost, completely lost, in an almost interminable forest. His food, too, was fast running low, and the scant herbage still left among the trees would no longer sustain his jaded animal. Then he turned the trusty beast adrift, to find its own way out of starvation.
He had eked out his scanty provisions with the nuts of the beech and chestnut, but now this resource was exhausted; the last handful of corn was consumed, and he was in a region of rocks and precipices (probably near the western base of the mountain), where nothing grew that would sustain life. Exhausted nature could hold out no longer. His strength was gone, he could not articulate above a whisper, and, sinking down at the foot of a cliff, he resigned himself to the inevitable.
How long he lay there he never told, and perhaps never knew; but at last, when his senses were nearly gone, he heard voices, and then approaching footsteps. They were two hunters, probably the only two human beings within a radius of a hundred miles. They came directly to the spot where he was lying, but did not see him till actually upon him. Dismounting from their horses, they lifted him in their arms, revived him with some spirits, and then, sparingly at first, ministered to him of the food in their knapsacks. Slowly his strength returned, but they stayed by him, and, when he was able to mount, seated him on one of their horses, and then guided him out of the mountain and for more than fifty miles on his way to the settlements. Then the good Samaritans went as they came, into the wide forest, leaving not even their names to a wondering tradition.
His friends and neighbors were enraptured with the description Robertson gave of the country he had discovered. To them the sterile plains and rocky uplands of Wake County lost their attractions when compared with the fertile valley which he pictured, and sixteen families prepared to go with him in the following spring to a new home west of the mountains.
When the April rains were over, they set out, about eighty souls, men, women, and children. They journeyed slowly, the men mostly on foot, the women on pack-horses, with the younger children in their arms or strapped upon the horses behind them, and the older ones trudging along by the side of their fathers, or aiding to drive the neat cattle, a score or more of which were the advance-guard of the cavalcade. The outfit of the party was simple. The men carried the usual equipment of the hunter, the women some light articles of clothing; and loaded on several led horses were such bedding and kitchen-utensils as would be needed at the end of the journey. They followed the route taken by the explorers, sleeping at night on the ground, beneath the open air, or sheltered by an improvised tent made of two forked poles thrust into the ground and supporting a longer pole, over which was stretched a heavy blanket. Should it rain, these tents were quickly pitched and all the travellers were soon under shelter. At the halting-place for the night a fire was built, the cows were milked, the journey-boards unpacked, and the delicious journey-cake (misnamed "Johnny-cake") was set before the fire or baked in the ashes. To this was added the deer or wild turkey shot by the men during the day, and they had a repast "fit to set before a king." The same was done before setting out in the morning; but at noon only a short halt was made for a cold lunch from the remains of the breakfast.
Thus they journeyed for about ten days, until they reached the base of Stone Mountain. Here they struck into a cove which breaks into the mountainside, and climbed by a winding route, but by easy stages, to the summit. Robertson rode by the side of his wife, and in front of her, astride of the pommel of the saddle, was their child, now a bright little fellow of two or three years. Later on he will appear again in our pages, and then disappear forever from human history.
As they wearily climbed the toilsome way, and paused to rest, as they probably did, at the summit, did not that young wife and mother look back, to gaze again upon the scenes she was leaving behind her? What girlhood associations she had I do not know, but she was leaving them all, and the old roof-tree beneath which she had spent her young days: all were about to pass out of her life forever. As she glanced forward into the tangled wilderness, would she not have turned back had a vision come to her of the hardships and dangers and death that lay before her?—her life at first buried amid the solitudes and dangers of Watauga, and then consigned to a frail boat which was to bear her a thousand miles, through untold perils, to a still more distant wilderness, where her home would be encircled with savage fire and the babe at her breast would be laid scalped and dying at her feet!