58 The Winning of the West 



freemen, who had come in with their wives and 

 children to possess the land. They were obliged to 

 use all their wit and courage to defend what they 

 had already won without wasting their strength by 

 grasping at that which lay beyond. The very con- 

 ditions that enabled so small a number to make a 

 permanent settlement forbade their trying unduly 

 to extend its bounds. 



Clark knew he could get from among his fellow- 

 settlers some men peculiarly suited for his purpose, 

 but he also realized that he would have to bring the 

 body of his force from Virginia. Accordingly he 

 decided to lay the case before Patrick Henry, then 

 Governor of the State of which Kentucky was only 

 a frontier county. 



On October i, 1777, he started from Harrods- 

 burg, 3 to go over the Wilderness Road. The brief 

 entries of his diary for this trip are very interesting 

 and sometimes very amusing. Before starting he 

 made a rather shrewd and thoroughly characteristic 

 speculation in horseflesh, buying a horse for 12, and 

 then "swapping" it with Isaac Shelby and getting 

 f 10 to boot. He evidently knew how to make a 

 good bargain, and had the true backwoods passion 

 for barter. He was detained a couple of days by 

 that commonest of frontier mischances, his horses 

 straying; a natural incident when the animal's were 

 simply turned loose on the range and looked up 



3 In the earlier MSS. it is called sometimes Harrodstown 

 and sometimes Harrodsburg; but from this time on the lat- 

 ter name is in general use. 



