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Dear Sir:

Your Excellency’s favor of the 27th of Feb’y was handed me yesterday by the General. My desire of seeing Major Evans and his Troops set forward on their Business with some other has detained me in this Country and am anxiously waiting their arrival. The Act of Assembly having made no provision for pilots for the Road, Major Evans finds himself much embarrassed in that point, and as I had the Opening the road much at heart have taken on me to procure & engage persons as pilots & have wrote to the Cherokee Chiefs Requesting them to recommend and send in an Indian well Acquainted with the Country through which the road must pass, & requested that Col. Martin will assist in procuring such a one. I have understood the Cherokees will have Objections to the Roads passing their Country. I have assured them nothing is intended against their Interest or Safety, and it is intended to be done purely for the Convenience, ease & Safety only of those that mean to emigrate to the Cumberland Settlements.

I shall forward the Duplicate of your Leter to Mr. Gilvary from this place by way of the Cherokee Nation as at this time I have a favourable opportunity. Politics in this part of the country run high, you hear in almost every collection of people frequent declarations for North Carolina, and others in the manner for the State of Franklin; I have seen it in much warmth. The Franklin Assembly have passed their Act to punish by imprisonment any person that shall Act in the Commission of Peace, or other Civil office under the

assumed Authority of North Carolina. God only knows where this condition will end, I fear it will end in blood. I received account from Cumberland dated in the present Month Mentioning that no Hostilities has been Committed in that Quarter since I mentioned to your Excellency from Hillsborough on my way out, though scarce a week passes but some one or more are killed at the Kentucky. All accounts say that all the Northward Tribes is determined for war the ensuing Summer. A long ridiculous piece without any signature has taken place in some of the papers, said to have been written by a General at the fall of Ohio to his friends in some of the Northern States, as if it’s the spirit of the people to revolt and fling themselves in the arms of Britain; these publications are prejudicial to the people in the Western Country and are in the greatest part false & groundless. I judge the goods at Port St. Vincent is seized and probably those at Illinois.

I shall at all times take a pleasure in communicating to your Excellency every Intelligence that I shall judge worthy your notice, and shall think myself honored with any thing you think proper to Communicate, & shall always honor every Instruction your Excellency shall Give.

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