Robertson had no share in the glory of King's Mountain, and no part in the subsequent career of the men who won it; for, at the time, he was doing his allotted work, a work of at least equal importance, in a different field.

Robertson had been for ten years a leader among the Holston and Watauga people.

Many adventurous settlers were anxious to accompany Robertson, and, like him, to take their wives and children with them into the new land.

Robertson Travels Thither.

Robertson himself first went north through the wilderness to see George Rogers Clark in Illinois, to purchase cabin-rights from him.

He tried to undersell the state in the land market, and undoubtedly his offers had been among the main causes that induced Robertson and his associates to go to the Cumberland when they did.

But at the time it was uncertain whether Cumberland lay in Virginia or North Carolina, as the line was not run by the surveyors until the following spring; and Robertson went up to see Clark, because it was rumored that the latter had the disposal of Virginia "cabin-rights"; under which each man could, for a small sum, purchase a thousand acres, on condition of building a cabin and raising a crop.

Robertson, meanwhile, was to lead the rest of the men by land, so that they should get there first and make ready for the coming of their families.

In Robertson's company was a man named John Rains, who brought with him twenty-one horned cattle and seventeen horses; the only cattle and horses which any of the immigrants succeeded in bringing to the Cumberland.

There were probably two or three hundred people, perhaps many more, in the company; among them, as the journal records, "James Robertson's lady and children," the latter to the number of five.

This happened on March 7th, just before coming to the uppermost Chickamauga town; and that night, the wife of one Ephraim Peyton, who had himself gone with Robertson, overland, was delivered of a child.

The central station, the capitol of the little community, was that at the Bluff, where Robertson built a little stockaded hamlet and called it Nashborough

It was doubtless drawn up by Robertson, with perhaps the help of Henderson, and was modelled upon what may be called the "constitution" of Watauga, with some hints from that of Transylvania.

The Cumberland country would have been abandoned to the Indians, had Robertson not shown himself to be exactly the man for whom the crisis called.

Robertson shot one of their number, and they in return killed a white man who sprang out-of-doors at the first alarm.

Robertson's return had been at a most opportune moment.

Putnam supplies some details learned from Mrs. Robertson in her old age.

They were under the direction of Colonel Robertson, who was head of all the branches of the government.

During this year Robertson carried on some correspondence with the Spanish governor at New Orleans, Don Estevan Miro.

Miro in answering Robertson assured him that the Spaniards were very friendly to the western settlers, and denied that the Spanish agents were stirring up trouble.

He ended by pressing Robertson and his friends to come down and settle in Spanish territory, guaranteeing them good treatment.

Robertson led his colony to the Cumberland but a few days before old Mansker led another; and though without Robertson the settlements would have been temporarily abandoned, they would surely have been reoccupied.

the letters of George Rogers Clark to Gardoqui, March 15, 1788; and of John Sevier to Gardoqui, September 12, 1788; and in the Robertson MS.

the letter of Robertson to McGillivray, August 3, 1788.

The two typical figures in Kentucky so far had been Clark and Boon, but after the close of the Revolution both of them sank into unimportance, whereas the careers of Sevier and Robertson had only begun.