In the Current of the Revolution 313 



The centre of county government was of course the 

 county court-house. 



Henderson, having established a land agency at 

 Boonesborough, at once proceeded to deed to the 

 Transylvania colonists entry certificates of surveys 

 of many hundred thousand acres. Most of the col- 

 onists were rather doubtful whether these certifi- 

 cates would ultimately prove of any value, and pre- 

 ferred to rest their claims on their original cabin 

 rights; a wise move on their part, though in the 

 end the Virginia Legislature confirmed Henderson's 

 sales in so far as they had been made to actual set- 

 tlers. All the surveying was of course of the very 

 rudest kind. Only a skilled woodsman could under- 

 take the work in such a country; and accordingly 

 much of it devolved on Boone, who ran the lines as 

 well as he could, and marked the trees with his own 

 initials, either by powder or else with knife. 18 The 

 State could not undertake to make the surveys itself, 

 so it authorized the individual settler to do so. This 

 greatly promoted the rapid settlement of the coun- 

 try, making it possible to deal with land as a com- 

 modity, and outlining the various claims, but the 

 inevitable result was that the sons of the settlers 

 reaped a crop of endless confusion and litigation. 



It is worth mentioning that the Transylvania 

 company opened a store at Bonesborough. Powder 

 and lead, the two commodities most in demand, 



from English institutions ; whereas many of those of New 

 England are rather pre-Normanic revivals, curiously paral- 

 leled in England as it was before the Conquest. 

 18 Boone's deposition, July 29, 1795. 



N VOL. V. 



