was not able to turn the river aside; but the river was able to cut its way across the mountain, making a gap through it from side to side. Examples of this are numerous in West Virginia. The Potomac cut a gap through the Blue Ridge at Harper's Ferry. The South Branch cut Mill Creek Mountain at Hanging Rocks. Mill Creek made a passage for itself through the same mountain at Mechanicsburg. Patterson's Creek wore a gateway for itself through New Creek Mountain at Greenland Gap. The North Fork cut across the same mountain at Hopewell. Tygart's River cut a gap through Laurel Hill in Randolph County. Cheat River made itself a passage through Briery Mountain in Preston County. Examples might be multiplied almost indefinitely. In all of these cases the rivers were there first. The folding strata which subsequently formed the mountains, were forced up so very slowly that the rivers were able to keep the ledges worn away as they arose.

17. The Power of Running Water.-If a river can cut a gap through a mountain which is being formed across its channel, it can readily be understood that an ordinary object would be able to offer no effective resistance to the ceaseless attack of a running stream. Rivers with swift currents cut downward, but have narrow valleys. Sluggish rivers have wide valleys, but do not deepen their channels. A very sluggish river has not sufficient current to carry away the sediment washed into it by rains, and its channel fills and makes its valley swampy. We have no such river in West Virginia.

18. The Work of Rain.-The forces of nature are incessantly at work leveling the land. Rivers transport to the sea the sand and silt which reach their channels. But a river, unless aided by other forces than its own currents, cannot obtain material beyond and above its own flood-plain. If rivers were the only excavating agencies, their valleys would be as narrow as the Canyon of the Colorado, if not as deep. Rain is the powerful ally which assists the rivers in carving

The landscape. Every shower washes dust, sand, mud, and pebbles, into the running brooks; the brooks carry the load to the rivers; the rivers carry it to the sea. Every rain washes soil from the high places to the low. Hills which are crowned with angular rocks are attacked by rain. In the course of

ages all their irregularities are worn down, and in place of barren cliffs their forms are beautifully rounded, and perhaps their sides are covered with fertile soil. Rounded hills, rolling ridges, and undulating landscapes, indicate age and long periods of erosion. Sharp peaks and rocky spurs are not usually so old. However, the hardness of the rock upon the one, or its softness upon the other, may be responsible for the difference of form, though both be of the same age. A hard rock will resist much longer than a soft one; and a peak of bare, hard sandstone, like the Seneca Rocks, in Pendleton County, may be much older than a rounded knoll, with a core of soft shale, like those in Harrison County.

19. The Work of Frosts.-Rain will wash down to the brooks grains of sand or small pebbles which it finds ready to be removed, but it has little power to loosen or detach heavy masses, or to break large rocks into small ones. That work is done by frost. The few drops of water which find their way into a crevice of a bowlder or a cliff, will freeze and will force the masses apart. It is not an exaggerated statement to say that our mountains are being torn to pieces by frost. A crevice so small as to be scarcely visible will be opened by the expansive force of freezing water and will become a large crack in a few years. The aggregate destruction from that

cause is enormous. It is much greater in the mountain regions of bare cliffs than in districts where the rocks are covered and protected by deep soil.

20. The Work of Wind.-The wind is of less importance as a geological agent in leveling the hills in West Virginia than in some other parts of the world. But it is, nevertheless, an industrious worker. It carries light dust from high places

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and deposits it in low. In dry weather it sweeps sand into gullies and sluices, ready for the next rain to carry it away. But its most noticeable work is done among the peaks and bare rocks of exposed mountains. It enters sheltered places where rains cannot reach, and it whips out every loose grain of sand from crevices and crannies of cliffs. It even wears away the cliffs themselves by its friction against them. In mountain regions it is not unusual to see rocks with all of their under surfaces hollowed out and honeycomed. Sometimes solitary rocks have been so worn by wind that they stand on stems like mushrooms. They are about ready to

tumble.

21. The Formation of Coal.-Coal is composed of wood, and the manner of its forming was, in some respects, similar to the forming of sandstone. When the sea which once covered West Virginia was so nearly filled with washings from land that it had become more a swamp than a sea, the growth of vegetation was very rank. The climate was hot and moist. Ferns and palms of enormous size covered the whole region. Their matted trunks and branches fell and accumulated. They were buried, and in the course of ages they were changed into coal. If one seam of coal is found above another it indicates that the lower was formed first, and the over-lying one is more recent. When wood for the first vein

had accumulated it was buried by sand and mud, and in course of time another forest grew over it, which, in its turn, became coal.

CHAPTER VII.

SETTLEMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA.

1. Division of the Subject.-Not until after traders had traversed West Virginia in their barter with the Indians and had become familiar with the paths, did settlers begin to arrive. The colonization of the State may be roughly divided into four parts: east of the Alleghanies, which was a distinct epoch as to time; the Monongahela Valley and its tributaries; the Kanawha and its tributaries; and the banks of the Ohio. Each of these was, to some extent, independent of the others, and each has a history of its own. The settement of the eastern part of the State has been given attention elsewhere in this book. It was closely connected with the colonization of the Shenandoah Valley: The commencement of the white man's occupation of the region west of the Alleghanies will now be considered.

2. The Ohio Company's Schemes.-There were extensive tracts of land between the Monongahela and the Ohio which belonged to the Ohio Company, and that company made efforts, always unsuccessful, to plant large colonies upon its possessions. About 1750 arrangements were completed to found a colony of one thousand Germans from Pennsylvania between the Monongahela and the Ohio. The plan failed, because there was an unreasonable law in operation in Virginia, which required all of the inhabitants to be members of the Church of England or suffer persecution in the form of extra taxes. When the Germans learned that religious freedom was denied in Virginia, they refused to go. Other efforts of the Ohio

Company failed also; and the region was left to be settled, by the unaided efforts of the immigrants who might choose to undertake it.

3. Virginia Tries to Plant Colonies. -Two years after the Ohio Company's failure to establish a colony of Germans west of the Alleghanies, the Virginia House of Burgesses attempted to carry out a similar enterprise, and met with no better success. Protestant settlers who would locate in Augusta county, west of the mountains, were promised ten years' exemption from taxation. The offer was subsequently increased to fifteen years without taxes No settlers accepted the offer. The French and Indian war began about that time, and Virginia had all it could do to maintain its settlements east of the mountains, without attempting to establish new colonies on western waters.

4. In Tygart's Valley. About 1753 the first cabins on the waters of the Monongahela, within West Virginia were built. The location was in what is now Randolph County. Robert Files built his cabin at the mouth of a creek which has ever since been known by his name, and the place is now occupied by the town of Beverly. David Tygart's cabin stood three miles above Beverly, and Tygart's River bears his name. These men brought their families from the South Branch. Within one year the Indians murdered one family and drove the other back to the South Branch. The valley of the Monongahela, for five years after that time, was without an inhabitant south of Pennsylvania. In 1758 a few settlers came with Thomas Decker and located at Morgantown. Decker's Creek still bears his name. The colony was soon destroyed by Indians. Thus ended the second effort to colonize west or the mountains; and for the ten succeeding years it is not known that any attempt at settling the country was made.

A Royal Proclamation.-In 1763 the King of England issued a proclamation forbidding all persons to take posses