190 The Winning of the West 



everything else except their rifles, hunting-shirts, 

 leggings, and moccasins. Like the other parties 

 of returning explorers, they found this portion of 

 their journey extremely distressing; and they suf- 

 fered much from sore feet, and also from want of 

 food, until they came on a gang of buffaloes, and 

 killed two. At last they struck Cumberland Gap, 

 followed a blazed trail across it to Powell's Valley, 

 and on August gth came to the outlying settlements 

 on Clinch River, where they found the settlers all 

 in their wooden forts, because of the war with the 

 Shawnees. 49 



In this same year many different bodies of hunt- 

 ers and surveyors came into the country, drifting 

 down the Ohio in pirogues. Some forty men led 

 by - Harrod and Sowdowsky 50 founded Harrods- 



49 I have given the account of Floyd's journey at some 

 length as illustrating the experience of a typical party of 

 surveyors. The journal has never hitherto been alluded 

 to, and my getting hold of it was almost accidental. 



There were three different kinds of explorers: Boone rep- 

 resents the hunters; the McAfees represent the would-be 

 settlers; and Floyd's party the surveyors who mapped out 

 the land for owners of land grants. In 1774, there were par- 

 ties of each kind in Kentucky. Floyd's experience shows 

 that these parties were continually meeting others and split- 

 ting up ; he started out with eight men, at one time was in 

 a body with thirty-seven, and returned home with four. 



The journal is written in a singularly clear and legible 

 hand, evidently by a man of good education. 



50 The latter, from his name presumably of Sclavonic an- 

 cestry, came originally from New York, always a centre of 

 mixed nationalities. He founded a most respectable family, 

 some of whom have changed their name to Sandusky; but 

 there seems to be no justification for their claim that they 



