Page:The Conquest.djvu/64

 mad for Kentucky," said the neighbours in Caroline. Through all that Autumn, emigrants were hurrying down to take advantage of the new land laws of Virginia.

"A fleet of flatboats!" shouted the workmen at the Falls. Down with others from Pittsburg, when the autumn rains raised the river, came Clark's old comrade, John Floyd, and his brothers and his bride, Jane Buchanan. One of those brothers was Isham Floyd, the boy drummer of Vincennes.

"I, too, shall build a fort," said John Floyd to his friends, "here on Bear Grass Creek, close to Louisville."

Still emigrants were on their way, when a most terrific winter set in. Stock was frozen, wild beasts and game died. The forests lay deep with snow, and rivers were solid with ice.

The cabins of Louisville were crowded, the fort was filled with emigrants. Food gave out, corn went up to one hundred and fifty dollars a bushel in depreciated continental currency. Even a cap of native fur cost five hundred dollars.

The patient people shivered under their buffalo, bear, and elk-skin bedquilts, penned in the little huts, living on boiled buffalo beef and venison hams, with fried bear or a slice of turkey breast for bread, and dancing on Christmas night with pineknot torches bracketed on the walls.

"Did you not say the conquerors of Vincennes waded through the drowned lands in February?" asked a fair one of her partner at the dance.

"Yes, but that was an open winter. This, thank God, is cold enough to deter our enemies from attempting to recover what they have lost."

"But Colonel Clark said the weather was warm?"

"Warm, did you say? Who knows what Clark would have called warm weather in February? The water up to their armpits could not have been warm at that time of year."

The spring waters broke; a thousand emigrants went down the Ohio to Louisville. And carcasses of bear, elk, deer, and lesser game floated out of the frozen forests.

During the June rise more than three hundred flatboats