The Blackwater Chronicle #266854

If the reader will take down the map of Virginia, and look at Randolph county, he will find that the Blackwater is a stream that makes down from the north into the Cheat river, some few miles below the point where that river is formed by the junction of the Dry fork, the Laurel fork, and the Glade fork - the Shavers, or Great fork, falling in some miles below: all rising and running along the western side of the Backbone of the Alleganies.<br><br>The country embraced by these head-waters of the Cheat river is called "The Canaan" - a wilderness of broken and rugged mountains - its streams falling through deep clefts, or leaping down in great cataracts, into the Cheat, that sweeps the base of the Backbone.