[114] For a sketch of the town of Washington, see F. A. Michaux’s Travels, vol. iii of this series, p. —, note 37. Cuming is mistaken in making it the seat of Bracken instead of Mason County.—Ed.
[115] For biographical sketch of General Henry Lee, see Michaux’s Travels, vol. iii of this series, p. 36, note 25.—Ed.
[116] Boonesborough was one of the first settlements of Kentucky, laid out in 1775 by the pioneer for whom it was named. It was the capital of the Transylvania Company, and the scene of some of the most noted events of early Kentucky history, particularly during the siege of 1778. Boonesborough declined in importance after the Indian wars; in 1810 it was a mere hamlet, and since that but the site of a farm. For further details see the excellent monograph of Ranck, Boonesborough (Filson Club Publications, No. 16; Louisville, 1901).—Ed.
[117] The Lower Blue Licks, which Cuming here describes, were discovered in 1773 by a party of surveyors led by John Finley. It was a well-known spot in early Kentucky annals, and Daniel Boone was here engaged in making salt when captured by Indians (1778). The most famous event in its history was the disastrous battle fought here, August 19, 1782, in which the flower of Kentucky frontiersmen lost their lives. See Young, “Battle of Blue Licks” in Durrett, Bryant’s Station (Filson Club Publications, No. 12; Louisville, 1897). The Lower Blue Licks later became, as Cuming indicates, a favorite watering-place for the vicinity.—Ed.
CHAPTER XXV
Nicholasville—Assembly of birds—Shafts to salt spring—Millersburgh—Capt. Waller—State of the country at first settlement—Massacre of the American militia under Col. Todd by the Indians—Astonishing plenty of game—Mode of killing the buffaloe—Their extirpation—Canes—Paper mill—Johnston’s—North branch of Elkhorn—General Russel.
Friday, twenty-first July, we arose early and proceeded on our journey. At about two miles from Blue Licks we passed a tavern, a double log gaol and a court-house in a very solitary situation, dignified with the name of Nicholasville, it being the seat of the county courts of Nicholas county. In one spot on the road were two crows, two doves, four red birds, and four partridges, assembled as if in council. They all took wing at our approach except the partridges, which in this country are wonderfully abundant, and very tame. They will walk quietly to the side of the road and look at the passing traveller with innocent confidence.
There were but one or two houses in the next six miles, which are through a stony defile between barren hills. The country then becomes better inhabited and the soil gradually improves to Millersburgh, a village of about thirty houses, thirteen miles from Blue Licks.[118] There is on the road an old shaft where an attempt was made to come at a salt spring {156} without success, but a little further they succeeded in finding a very strong one, which was rendered useless by some springs of fresh water flowing into the salt, at such a depth as to render the turning them away if not impracticable, at least too expensive.
We breakfasted at Capt. Waller’s tavern, at Millersburgh.[119] Our host was an obliging and sensible man, and possessed of good general information relative to this country: he was not destitute of some particular also. We collected from him, that when he first arrived in Kentucky, about twenty-three years ago, there was not a house between Limestone and Lexington, and at the latter place were only a few log cabins under the protection of a stoccado fort.—That there was not half a mile of the road between the two places unstained by human blood.—That in 1782, on the heights above the Blue Lick, 2000 Indians drew 1500 Americans into an ambush, by partially exposing themselves, and so tempting the latter to attack them. The American commander, Col. Todd, and six hundred of his men were killed, and the whole party would have been destroyed had the remainder not saved themselves by throwing themselves into the Licking and gaining the opposite bank, to which the Indians did not chuse to pursue them, satisfied with the slaughter they had made.[120] He said that buffaloes, bears and deer were so plenty in the country, even long after it began to be generally settled, and ceased to be frequented as a hunting ground by the Indians, that little or no bread was used, but that even the children were fed on game; the facility of gaining which prevented the progress of agriculture, until the poor innocent buffaloes were completely extirpated, and the other wild animals much thinned: And that the principal part of the cultivation of Kentucky had been within the last fifteen years. He said the buffaloes had been so numerous, going in herds of several hundreds together, that {157} about the salt licks and springs they frequented, they pressed down and destroyed the soil to a depth of three or four feet, as was conspicuous yet in the neighbourhood of the Blue Lick, where all the old trees have their roots bare of soil to that depth.—Those harmless and unsuspecting animals, used to stand gazing with apparent curiosity at their destroyer, until he was sometimes within twenty yards of them, when he made it a rule to select the leader, which was always an old and fat female. When she was killed, which rarely failed from the great dexterity of the hunter, the rest of the herd would not desert her, until he had shot as many as he thought proper. If one of the common herd was the first victim of the rifle, the rest would immediately fly. The males sometimes exceeded a thousand pounds weight, but the females were seldom heavier than five hundred. He said that the whole country was then an entire cane brake, which sometimes grew to forty feet high, but that the domestick stock introduced by the settlers have eradicated the cane, except in some remote and unsettled parts of the state. He described that plant, as springing up with a tender shoot, like asparagus, which cattle are very fond of.
Millerstown has been settled about ten years, but it is not thriving, though it seems well calculated for a manufacturing town, from its situation on the bank of Hinckson’s fork of the Licking, which is a good mill stream, and over which there is a wooden bridge.