The greater part of the savage victors, laden with scalps and spoils, returned exultantly to their northern homes, although small bands still remained south of the Ohio, carrying wide-spread devastation through the settlements, especially in the neighborhood of Salt River, where, at one station, thirty-seven prisoners were taken. While all these tragedies were being enacted, General Clark, at the Falls of the Ohio, had offered only slight aid. But indignant protests sent in to the Virginia authorities by the Kentucky settlers, who were now in a state of great alarm, roused the hero of Kaskaskia and Vincennes to a sense of his duty. A vigorous call to arms was now issued throughout the three counties. Early in November over a thousand mounted riflemen met their brigadier at the mouth of the Licking, and from the site of Cincinnati marched through the Ohio forests to the Indian towns on the Little Miami. The savages fled in consternation, leaving the Kentuckians to burn their cabins and the warehouses of several British traders, besides large stores of grain and dried meats, thus entailing great suffering among the Shawnese during the winter now close at hand. The triumphant return of this expedition gave fresh heart to the people of Kentucky; and the sequel proved that, although the tribesmen of the north frequently raided the over-mountain settlers throughout the decade to come, no such important invasions as those of 1782 were again undertaken. FOOTNOTE: [16] Address at Camp Madison, Franklin County, Ky., in 1843. CHAPTER XIII KENTUCKY'S PATH OF THORNS The preliminary articles of peace between the United States and Great Britain had been signed on the thirtieth of November, 1782; but it was not until the following spring that the news reached Kentucky. The northern tribes had information of the peace quite as early; and discouraged at apparently losing their British allies, who had fed, clothed, armed, and paid them from headquarters in Detroit, for a time suspended their organized raids into Kentucky. This welcome respite caused immigration to increase rapidly. We have seen how the old system of making preemptions and surveys led to the overlapping of claims, the commission of many acts of injustice, and wide-spread confusion in titles. Late in 1782, Colonel Thomas Marshall, the surveyor of Fayette County, arrived from Virginia, and began to attempt a straightening of the land conflict. Boone was now not only the surveyor's deputy, but both sheriff and county lieutenant of Fayette, a combination of offices which he held until his departure from Kentucky. It was his duty as commandant to provide an escort for Marshall through the woods to the Falls of the Ohio, where was now the land-office. The following order which he issued for this guard has been preserved; it is a characteristic sample of the many scores of letters and other documents which have come down to us from the old hero, who fought better than he spelled: