brief, the entire male
population of the county seemed to have moved upon Louisville after the
barbecue, and I paused involuntarily at the sight which met my eyes as I
came into the street. A score of sputtering, smoking pine-knots threw
a lurid light on as many hilarious groups, and revealed, fantastically
enough, the boles and lower branches of the big shade trees above them.
Navigation for the individual, difficult enough lower down, in front of
the tavern became positively dangerous. There was a human eddy,--nay, a
maelstrom would better describe it. Fights began, but ended abortively
by reason of the inability of the combatants to keep their feet; one
man whose face I knew passed me with his hat afire, followed by several
companions in gusts of laughter, for the torch-bearers were careless
and burned the ears of their friends in their enthusiasm. Another person
whom I recognized lacked a large portion of the front of his attire, and
seemed sublimely unconscious of the fact. His face was badly scratched.
Several other friends of mine were indulging in brief intervals of
rest on the ground, and I barely avoided stepping on them. Still other
gentlemen were delivering themselves of the first impressive periods of
orations, only to be drowned by the cheers of their auditors. These were
the snatches which I heard as I picked my way onward with exaggerated
fear:--

"Gentlemen, the Mississippi is ours, let the tyrants who forbid its use
beware!" "To hell with the Federal government!" "I tell you, sirs,
this land is ours. We have conquered it with our blood, and I reckon no
Spaniard is goin' to stop us. We ain't come this far to stand still.
We settled Kaintuck, fit off the redskins, and we'll march across the
Mississippi and on and on--" "To Louisiany!" they shouted, and the whole
crowd would take it up, "To Louisiany! Open the river!"

So absorbed was I in my own safety and progress that I did not pause
to think (as I have often thought since) of the full meaning of this,
though I had marked it for many years. The support given to Wilkinson's
plots, to Clark's expedition, was merely the outward and visible sign of
the onward sweep of a resistless race. In spite of untold privations and
hardships, of cruel warfare and massacre, these people had toiled over
the mountains into this land, and impatient of check or hindrance would,
even as Clark had predicted, when their numbers were sufficient leap the
Mississippi. Night or