ted village of Nashborough. A few days after
their arrival they were joined by another batch of hunter-settlers, who
had come out under the leadership of Kasper Mansker.

As soon as the corn was planted and cabins put up, most of the intending
settlers returned to their old homes to bring out their families,
leaving three of their number "to keep the buffaloes out of the corn."
[Footnote: Haywood, 83.] Robertson himself first went north through the
wilderness to see George Rogers Clark in Illinois, to purchase
cabin-rights from him. This act gives an insight into at least some of
the motives that influenced the adventurers. Doubtless they were
impelled largely by sheer restlessness and love of change and
excitement; [Footnote: Phelan, p. 111, fails to do justice to these
motives, while very properly insisting on what earlier historians
ignored, the intense desire for land speculation.] and these motives
would probably have induced them to act as they did, even had there been
no others. But another and most powerful spring of action was the desire
to gain land--not merely land for settlement, but land for speculative
purposes. Wild land was then so abundant that the quantity literally
seemed inexhaustible; and it was absolutely valueless until settled. Our
forefathers may well be pardoned for failing to see that it was of more
importance to have it owned in small lots by actual settlers than to
have it filled up quickly under a system of huge grants to individuals
or corporations. Many wise and good men honestly believed that they
would benefit the country at the same time that they enriched themselves
by acquiring vast tracts of virgin wilderness, and then proceeding to
people them. There was a rage for land speculation and land companies of
every kind.

The private correspondence of almost all the public men of the period,
from Washington, Madison, and Gouverneur Morris down, is full of the
subject. Innumerable people of position and influence dreamed of
acquiring untold wealth in this manner. Almost every man of note was
actually or potentially a land speculator; and in turn almost every
prominent pioneer from Clark and Boon to Shelby and Robertson was either
himself one of the speculators or an agent for those who were. Many
people did not understand the laws on the subject, or hoped to evade
them; and the hope was as strong in the breast of the hunter, who made a
"tomahawk claim" by blazing a few trees, and sold it