Such were the different classes of settlers who successively came into
Kentucky, as into other western lands. There were of course no sharp
lines of cleavage between the classes. They merged insensibly into one
another, and the same individual might, at different times, stand in two
or three. As a rule the individuals composing the first two were crowded
out by their successors, and, after doing the roughest of the pioneer
work, moved westward with the frontier; but some families were of course
continually turning into permanent abodes what were merely temporary
halting places of the greater number.

Change in Subjects of Interest.

With the change in population came the corresponding change in
intellectual interests and in material pursuits. The axe was the tool,
and the rifle the weapon, of the early settlers; their business was to
kill the wild beasts, to fight the savages, and to clear the soil; and
the enthralling topics of conversation were the game and the Indians,
and, as the settlements grew, the land itself. As the farms became
thick, and towns throve, and life became more complex, the chances for
variety in work and thought increased likewise. The men of law sprang
into great prominence, owing in part to the interminable litigation over
the land titles. The more serious settlers took about as much interest
in matters theological as in matters legal; and the congregations of the
different churches were at times deeply stirred by quarrels over
questions of church discipline and doctrine. [Footnote: Durrett
Collection; see various theological writings, e.g., "A Progress," etc.,
by Adam Rankin, Pastor at Lexington. Printed "at the Sign of the
Buffalo," Jan. 1, 1793.] Most of the books were either text-books of the
simpler kinds or else theological.

Except when there was an Indian campaign, politics and the river
commerce formed the two chief interests for all Kentuckians, but
especially for the well-to-do.

Features of the River Travel.

In spite of all the efforts of the Spanish officials the volume of trade
on the Mississippi grew steadily. Six or eight years after the close of
the Revolution the vast stretches of brown water, swirling ceaselessly
between the melancholy forests, were already furrowed everywhere by the
keeled and keelless craft. The hollowed log in which the Indian paddled;
the same craft, the pirogue, only a little more carefully made, and on a
little larger model, in which the c