"Grey, Zane - Betty Zane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grey Zane)

destined to overcome all difficulties and make a home in the western world.

But fifty years and more passed before a white man penetrated far beyond the
purple spires of those majestic mountains.

One bright morning in June, 1769, the figure of a stalwart, broad shouldered
man could have been seen standing on the wild and rugged promontory which
rears its rocky bluff high above the Ohio river, at a point near the mouth of
Wheeling Creek. He was alone save for the companionship of a deerhound that
crouched at his feet. As he leaned on a long rifle, contemplating the glorious
scene that stretched before km, a smile flashed across his bronzed cheek, and
his heart bounded as he forecast the future of that spot. In the river below
him lay an island so round and green that it resembled a huge lily pad
floating placidly on the water. The fresh green foliage of the trees sparkled
with glittering dewdrops. Back of him rose the high ridges, and, in front, as
far as eye could reach, extended an unbroken forest.

Beneath him to the left and across a deep ravine he saw a wide level clearing.
The few scattered and blackened tree stumps showed the ravages made by a
forest fire in the years gone by. The field was now overgrown with hazel and
laurel bushes, and intermingling with them w ere the trailing arbutus, the
honeysuckle, and the wild rose. A fragrant perfume was wafted upward to him. A
rushing creek bordered one edge of the clearing. After a long quiet reach of
water, which could be seen winding back in the hills, the stream tumbled madly
over a rocky ledge, and white with foam, it hurried onward as if impatient of
long restraint, and lost its individuality in the broad Ohio.

This solitary hunter was Colonel Ebenezer Zane. He was one of those daring
men, who, as the tide of emigration started westward, had left his friends and
family and had struck out alone into the wilderness. Departing from his home
in Eastern Virginia he had plunged into the woods, and after many days of
hunting and exploring, he reached the then far Western Ohio valley.

The scene so impressed Colonel Zane that he concluded to found a settlement
there. Taking "tomahawk possession" of the locality (which consisted of
blazing a few trees with his tomahawk), he built himself a rude shack and
remained that summer on the Ohio.

In the autumn he set out for Berkeley County, Virginia, to tell his people of
the magnificent country he had discovered. The following spring he persuaded a
number of settlers, of a like spirit with himself, to accompany him to the
wilderness. Believing it unsafe to take their families with them at once, they
left them at Red Stone on the Monongahela river, while the men, including
Colonel Zane, his brothers Silas, Andrew, Jonathan and Isaac, the Wetzels,
McCollochs, Bennets, Metzars and others, pushed on ahead.

The country through which they passed was one tangled, most impenetrable
forest; the axe of the pioneer had never sounded in this region, where every
rod of the way might harbor some unknown danger.