One, who went thither in the early spring of 1776, kept a journal of his trip.[4] He travelled over the Wilderness Road with eight other men.

Three of them were Baptists like himself, who prayed every night; and their companions, though they did not take part in the praying, did not interrupt it.
Their journey through the melancholy and silent wilderness resembled in its incidents the countless other similar journeys that were made at that time and later.
They suffered from cold and hunger and lack of shelter; they became footsore and weary, and worn out with driving the pack-horses.

On the top of the lonely Cumberland Mountains they came upon the wolf-eaten remains of a previous traveller, who had recently been killed by Indians.

At another place they met four men returning--cowards, whose hearts had failed them when in sight of the promised land.

While on the great Indian war-trail they killed a buffalo, and thenceforth lived on its jerked meat.