Day after day the three trudged along, fording streams, clambering hills, wading morasses, and threading ravines, each night constructing a frail shelter, and cooking by their camp-fire such game as they had taken by the way.
After traversing these almost pathless wilds a hundred and fifty miles, and having advanced nearly fifty miles beyond any white settlement, they reached the banks of a lonely stream, called Obion River, on the extreme western frontier of Tennessee.

This river emptied into the Mississippi but a few miles from the spot where Crockett decided to rear his cabin.

His nearest neighbor was seven miles distant, his next fifteen, his next twenty.
About ten years before, that whole region had been convulsed by one of the most terrible earthquakes recorded in history.

One or two awful hurricanes had followed the earthquake, prostrating the gigantic forest, and scattering the trees in all directions.

Appalling indications remained of the power expended by these tremendous forces of nature.