Travelers through Cumberland Gap and along the Wilderness Road left accounts of a rugged passage marked by creeks, springs, caves, steep and rocky mountainsides, Indian roads, camps, and the constant danger of attack. In 1750, Dr. Thomas Walker recorded Cedar Creek, Cave Gap, a large spring flowing through a cave, marked laurel trees, and the steep ridge at the gap, creating the first written record of the discovery of Cumberland Gap. Later travelers including Daniel Boone, William Calk, Jane Gay Stevenson, Daniel Trabue, James Trimble's wife Jane Allen Trimble, James Nourse, Moses Austin, and Rev. James Smith recalled snow, rain, hunger, narrow rocky descents, stolen horses, abandoned settlements, women and children struggling through winter wilderness, and repeated fears of Indians, even when some parties passed without interruption. Alongside these emigrant memories, Dragging Canoe warned in 1775 that white settlers had crossed the mountains onto Cherokee land and that his people faced dispossession as settlement advanced.