Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 1).djvu/122

118 pioneers called them, which the buffaloes made from their grazing fields and brakes, they [Boone and his brother] found a number of the great 'licks' to which wild animals in countless multitudes commonly resorted in hunt of salt. These buffalo traces are plainly marked out to the present day."

One or two references will show how common it was to refer to buffalo "traces" as the main thoroughfares of Kentucky: "Hardly had the plaudits of the pioneers for the women of Bryant's Station died on the stillness of the sultry August air ere summer breezes carried the story of the awful carnage and destruction at the Battle of the Blue Licks, from the valley of the Licking, by the buffalo traces, to the settlements on the Kentucky River." " It was the 16th of August when Caldwell and McKee, piloted by Simon Girty, assailed the place [Bryant's Station]. They had surrounded it during the previous night. They came like the pestilence that walks in darkness, unexpected and un-