taste in preaching. Clarkson,
in his journal of his western trip, mentions with approval a sermon he
heard as being "a very judicious and alarming discourse."

20. McAfee MSS.

21. In the McAfee MSS. there is an amusing mention of the skin of a huge
bull elk, killed by the father, which the youngsters christened "old
ellick"; they used to quarrel for the possession of it on cold nights,
as it was very warm, though if the hairside was turned in it became
slippery and apt to slide off the bed.

22. On the mountains the climate, flora, and fauna were all those of the
north, not of the adjacent southern lowlands. The ruffed grouse, red
squirrel, snow bird, various Canadian warblers, and a peculiar species
of boreal field-mouse, the _evotomys_, are all found as far south
as the Great Smokies.

23. Doddridge's "Settlements and Indian Wars," (133) written by an
eyewitness; it is the most valuable book we have on old-time frontier
ways and customs.

24. The land laws differed at different times in different colonies; but
this was the usual size at the outbreak of the Revolution, of the farms
along the western frontier, as under the laws of Virginia, then
obtaining from the Holston to the Alleghany, this amount was allotted
every settler who built a cabin or raised a crop of corn.

25. Beside the right to 400 acres, there was also a preemption right to
1,000 acres more adjoining to be secured by a land-office warrant. As
between themselves the settlers had what they called "tomahawk rights,"
made by simply deadening a certain number of trees with a hatchet. They
were similar to the rights conferred in the west now by what is called a
"claim shack" or hut, built to hold some good piece of land; that is,
they conferred no title whatever, except that sometimes men would pay
for them rather than have trouble with the claimant.

26. McAfee MSS. (particularly Autobiography of Robert McAfee).

27. To this day it is worn in parts of the Rocky Mountains, and even
occasionally, here and there, in the Alleghanies.

28. The above is the description of one of Boon's rifles, now in the
possession of Col. Durrett. According to the inscription on the barrel
it was made at Louisville (Ky.), in 1782, by M. Humble. It is perfectly
plain; whereas one of Floyd's rifles, which I have also seen, is much
more highly finished, and with some ornamentation.

29. For the opinion of a foreign military observer on the phenomenal
accuracy of backw