d by their
wives and children. Cold weather of extraordinary severity set in during
November; for this was the famous "hard winter" of '79-80, during which
the Kentucky settlers suffered so much. They were not molested by
Indians, and reached the Bluff about Christmas. The river was frozen
solid, and they all crossed the ice in a body; when in mid-stream the
ice jarred, and--judging from the report--the jar or crack must have
gone miles up and down the stream; but the ice only settled a little and
did not break. By January first there were over two hundred people
scattered on both sides of the river. In Robertson's company was a man
named John Rains, who brought with him twenty-one horned cattle and
seventeen horses; the only cattle and horses which any of the immigrants
succeeded in bringing to the Cumberland. But he was not the only man who
had made the attempt. One of the immigrants who went in Donelson's
flotilla, Daniel Dunham by name, offered his brother John, who went by
land, L100 to drive along his horses and cattle. John accepted, and
tried his best to fulfil his share of the bargain; but he was seemingly
neither a very expert woodsman nor yet a good stock hand. There is no
form of labor more arduous and dispiriting than driving unruly and
unbroken stock along a faint forest or mountain trail, especially in bad
weather; and this the would-be drover speedily found out. The animals
would not follow the trail; they incessantly broke away from it, got
lost, scattered in the brush, and stampeded at night. Finally the
unfortunate John, being, as he expressed it, nearly "driven mad by the
drove," abandoned them all in the wilderness. [Footnote: MSS. on "Dunham
Pioneers," in Nashville Hist. Society. Daniel, a veteran stockman, was
very angry when he heard what had happened.]

Voyage of the "Adventure."

The settlers who came by water passed through much greater peril and
hardship. By a stroke of good fortune the journal kept by Donelson, the
leader of the expedition, has been preserved. [Footnote: Original MS.
"Journal of Voyage intended by God's permission in the good boat
_Adventure_ from Fort Patrick Henry of Holston River to the French Salt
Springs on Cumberland River, kept by John Donelson." An abstract, with
some traditional statements interwoven, is given by Haywood; the journal
itself, with some inaccuracies, and the name of the writer misspelt by
Ramsey; and in much better and fuller shape by A. N. Putna