Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/185

 *burgh."[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