The river Cumberland, known to the French Canadians by the name of the river Shavanon, derives its source in Kentucky, amidst the mountains that separate it from Virginia. Its course is about four hundred and fifty miles. It is navigable, in winter and spring, for three hundred and fifty miles from its embouchure; but in summer, not above fifty miles from Nasheville. The river Tennessea, named by the French Canadians the Cherokee River, is the most considerable of all those that empty themselves into the Ohio. It begins at West Point, where it is formed by the junction of the rivers Clinch and Holston, which derive their source in that part of the Alleghany Mountains situated in Virginia, each of {231} which are more than a hundred fathoms broad at their embouchure. Both are navigable to an immense distance, and particularly the Holston, which is so for two hundred miles. The river French Broad, one of the principal branches of the Holston, receives its waters from the Nolachuky, is about twenty fathoms broad, and is navigable in the spring. Thus the Tennessea, with the Holston, has, in the whole, a navigable course for near eight hundred miles: but this navigation is interrupted six months in the year by the muscle shoals, a kind of shallows interspersed with rocks, which are met with in its bed two hundred miles from its embouchure in the Ohio. From West Point the borders of this great river are yet almost entirely uninhabited. The signification of the name of Tennessea, which it bears, is unknown to the Cherokees and Chactaws that occupied this country before the whites. Mr. Fisk, who has had several conversations with these Indians, never heard any precise account; in consequence of which it is most likely that this name has {232} been given to it by the nation that the Cherokees succeeded.[56]

The Cumberland Mountains are but a continuation of Laurel Mountain, which itself is one of the principal links of the Alleghanies. These mountains, on the confines of Virginia, incline more toward the west, and by the direction which they take, cut obliquely in two the state of Tennessea, which, in consequence, divides East and West Tennessea into two parts, both primitively known by the names of the Holston and Cumberland settlements, and which afford each a different aspect, both by the nature of the country, and by the productions that grow there.

West Tennessea comprises two-thirds of this state. The greater part of it reposes upon a bank of chalky substance of the same nature, the beds of which are horizontal. The stratum of vegetable earth with which it is covered appears generally not so thick as in Kentucky, and participates less of the clayey nature. It is usually, in point of colour, of {233} a dark brown, without the least mixture of stony substances. The forests that cover the country clearly indicate how favourable the soil is for vegetation, as most of the trees acquire a very large diameter. Iron mines are also as scarce there as in Kentucky; and provided any new ones were discovered, they would have been worked immediately, since the iron that is imported from Pennsylvania is at such an enormous price.

The secondary rivers which in this part of Tennessea run into Cumberland are almost completely dry during the summer; and it is probable enough, that when the population grows more numerous, and the plantations are formed farther from their banks, the want of water will be more severely felt in this part than in Kentucky. There are, notwithstanding, several large rivulets or creeks that issue from excavations that are found at the foot of the mountains, in different parts of the country: at the same time it has been remarked that these kind of sources never fail, although the water is not so deep in summer. {234} Just at the mouth of these subterraneous passages they are sometimes accompanied with a current of air strong enough to extinguish a light. I observed this particularly myself at the spring of the rivulet called Dixon’s Spring, and of another situated about four miles from Nasheville.

It was in 1780 that the whites first made the attempt to travel over the Cumberland Mountains, and to settle in the environs of Nasheville; but the emigrants were not very numerous there till the year 1789. They had to support, for several years, a bloody war against the Indian Cherokees, and till 1795 the settlements at Holston and Kentucky communicated with those in Cumberland by caravans, for the sake of travelling in safety over so extensive a tract of uninhabited country that separated them; but for these five or six years past, since peace has been made with the natives, the communications formed between the countries are perfectly established; and although not much frequented, they travel there with as much safety as in any other part of the Atlantic states.

{235} This country having been populated after that of Kentucky, every measure was taken at the commencement to avoid the great confusion that exists concerning the right of property in the latter state; at the same time the titles are looked upon as more valid, and not so subject to dispute. This reason, the extraordinary fertility of the soil, and a more healthy climate, are such great inducements to the emigrants of the Atlantic states, that most of them prefer settling in West Tennessea than in Kentucky. They reckon there, at present, thirty thousand inhabitants, and five or six thousand negro slaves.

With a few exceptions the various species of trees and shrubs that form the mass of the forests are the same as those that I observed in the most fertile parts of Kentucky. The gleditsia triacanthos is still more common there.[57] Of this wood the Indians made their bows, before they adopted the use of fire-arms.

We found particularly, in these forests, a tree which, by the shape of its fruit and the disposition of its leaves, appears to have great affinity with the {236} sophora japonica, the wood of which is used by the Chinese for dyeing yellow. My father, who discovered this tree in 1796, thought that it might be employed for the same use, and become an important object of traffic for the country. He imparted his conjectures to Mr. Blount, then governor of this state, and his letter was inserted in the Gazette at Knoxville on the 15th of March 1796. Several persons in the country having a great desire to know whether it were possible to fix the beautiful yellow which the wood of this tree communicated to the water by the simple infusion, cold, I profited by my stay at Nasheville to send twenty pounds of it to New York, the half of which was remitted to Dr. Mitchell, professor of chemistry, and the other addressed to Paris, to the Board of Agriculture, attached to the Minister of the Interior, in order to verify the degree of utility that might be derived from it. This tree very seldom rises above forty feet, and grows, in preference, on the knobs, species of little hills, where the soil is very rich. Several of the inhabitants have {237} remarked that there is not in the country a single species of tree that produces so great an abundance of sap. The quantity that it supplies exceeds even that of the sugar maple, although the latter is twice its bulk. The epoch of my stay at Nasheville being that when the seeds of this tree were ripe, I gathered a small quantity of them, which I brought over with me, and which have all come up. Several of the plants are at the present moment ten or fifteen inches high. It is very probable that this tree may be reared in France, and that it will endure the cold of our winters, and more so, as, according to what I have been told, the winters are as severe in Tennessea as in any parts of France.

West Tennessea is not so salubrious as Holston and Kentucky. A warmer and damper climate is the cause of intermittent fevers being more common there. Emigrants, for the first year of their settling there, and even travellers, are, during that season, subject to an exanthemetic affection similar to the itch. This malady, with which I began to be attacked {238} before I reached Fort Blount, yielded to a cooling regimen, and repeated bathings in the rivers Cumberland and Roaring. This disorder is very appropriately called in the country the Tennessean itch.