[From the same]
It was on the 1st of May, in the year 1769, that I resigned my
domestic happiness for a time, and left my family and peaceable
habitation on the Yadkin river, in North Carolina, to wander through
the wilderness of America, in quest of the country of Kentucky, in
company with John Finley, John Stewart, Joseph Holden, James Monay,
and William Cool. We proceeded successfully; and after a long and
fatiguing journey, through a mountainous wilderness, in a westward
direction, on the seventh day of June following we found ourselves on
Red river, where John Finley had formerly been trading with the
Indians, and, from the top of an eminence, saw with pleasure the
beautiful level of Kentucky. Here let me observe, that for some time
we had experienced the most uncomfortable weather as a prelibation of
our future sufferings. At this place we encamped, and made a shelter
to defend us from the inclement season, and began to hunt and
reconnoiter the country. We found everywhere abundance of wild beasts
of all sorts, through this vast forest. The buffaloe were more
frequent than I have seen cattle in the settlements, browsing on the
leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage on those extensive plains,
fearless, because ignorant, of the violence of man. Sometimes we saw
hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were
amazing. In this forest, the habitation of beasts of every kind
natural to America, we practiced hunting with great success, until the
22d day of December following.