112 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
stantiated, as the subjoimed extracts from reliable authorities sufficiently 
attest. 
M‘Clung, in his sketch of Simon Kenton, “taken from a manuscript ac- 
count, dictated by the venerable pioneer himself,” relates the following: 
“Kenton, with two companions, set out from Cabin Creek, a few miles 
above Maysville, apparently about 1773 and 1774, to explore the neigh- 
boring country. In a short time they reached the vicinity of May’s Lick, 
where they fell in with the great buffalo trace, which in a few hours brought 
them to the Lower Blue Lick. The flats upon each side of the river were 
crowded with immense herds of buffalo, that had come down from the in- 
terior for the sake of salt; and a number of elk were seen upon the bare 
ridges which surround the springs. ... . After remaining a few days at 
the lick, and killing an immense number of deer and buffalo, they crossed 
the Licking, and passed through the present counties of Scott, Fayette, Wood- 
ford, Clarke, Montgomery, and Bath, where, falling in with another buffalo 
trace, it conducted them to the Upper Blue Lick, where they again beheld 
elk and buffalo in immense numbers.” * 
In an account of the adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, published by 
Filson, Boone states that he left his “family and peaceable habitation on 
the Yadkin River, in North Carolina, the 1st of May, 1769, to wander 
through the wilderness of America, in quest of the country of Kentucke.” 
Crossing the “mountain wilderness,” he and his five companions found 
themselves on Red River, on the seventh of June following. Here they 
encamped and began to reconnoitre the country. Boone writes: “We 
found every where abundance of wild beasts of all sorts, through this 
vast forest. The buffaloes were more frequent than I have seen cattle in 
the settlements, browzing on the leaves of the cane, or croping the herb- 
age on those extensive plains, fearless, because ignorant, of the violence 
of man. Sometimes we saw hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about 
the salt springs were amazing.” + During the severe winter of 1780 and 
1781, Boone says that the inhabitants of Kentucky “lived chiefly on the 
flesh of the buffalo.” 
Filson says (writing in 1784): “I have heard a hunter assert, he saw above 
one thousand buffaloes at the Blue Licks at once; so numerous were they 
before the first settlers had wantonly sported away their lives. There still 
* Western Adventures, p. 86. 
+ Filson (John), Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky, 1784, pp. 50, 51. 
