to be used very sparingly; occasionally a beef
was killed, out of the herd of cattle that accompanied the emigrants;
but generally they lived on the game they shot--deer, turkeys, and, when
they got to Kentucky, buffaloes. Sometimes this was killed as they
travelled; more often the hunters got it by going out in the evening
after they had pitched camp.

The journey was hard and tiresome. At times it rained; and again there
were heavy snow-storms, in one of which an emigrant got lost, and only
found his way to camp by the help of a pocket-compass. The mountains
were very steep, and it was painfully laborious work to climb them,
while chopping out a way for the pack-train. At night a watch had to be
kept for Indians. It was only here and there that the beasts got good
grazing. Sometimes the horses had their saddles turned while struggling
through the woods. But the great difficulty came in crossing the creeks,
where the banks were rotten, the bottom bad, or the water deep; then the
horses would get mired down and wet their packs, or they would have to
be swum across while their loads were ferried over on logs. One day, in
going along a creek, they had to cross it no less than fifty times, by
"very bad foards."

On the seventh of April they were met by Boon's runner, bearing tidings
of the loss occasioned by the Indians; and from that time on they met
parties of would-be settlers, who, panic-struck by the sudden forays,
were fleeing from the country. Henderson's party kept on with good
courage, and persuaded quite a number of the fugitives to turn back with
them. Some of these men who were thus leaving the country were not doing
so because of fright; for many, among them the McAfees, had not brought
out their families, but had simply come to clear the ground, build
cabins, plant corn, and turn some branded cattle loose in the woods,
where they were certain to thrive well, winter and summer, on the
nourishing cane and wild pea-vine. The men then intended to go back to
the settlements and bring out their wives and children, perhaps not till
the following year; so that things were in a measure prepared for them,
though they were very apt to find that the cattle had been stolen by the
Indians, or had strayed too far to be recovered.[12]

The bulk of those fleeing, however, were simply frightened out of the
country. There seems no reason to doubt[13] that the establishment of
the strong, well-backed settlement of Boonsboroug