By this time the colonists, and especially those on the borders, had begun to treat the representatives of King George with scant respect, and the Transylvania Company was in no measure deterred from the prosecution of its enterprise by the proclamations issued against it by Governors Martin and Dunmore. Boone counselled immediate action, reasoning that the Indians might be expected to observe the treaty for a few months and that by driving the entering wedge home before they should awake to active opposition, much would be gained. In this view the promoters concurred and again they relied upon their trusty agent to carry out their designs. In his expedition of the preceding January, Boone had marked a spot for the first settlement of the Transylvania Company, and now it was arranged that he should go out at the head of a body of thirty picked backwoodsmen to mark a path through the wilderness to the place selected. The party started immediately after the conclusion of the meeting on the Watauga and arrived at their destination on the sixth day of April. They encountered many difficulties on the way and were more than once attacked by Indians, several of their number being killed and wounded. The point at which it was decided to locate the capital town of Transylvania, as the colony was to be called, was Big Lick, just below Otter Creek on the Kentucky River. The site was a plain on the south side of the river, and as the pioneers approached it they were confronted with a sight which to most of them was entirely novel. Hundreds of buffalo occupied the destined ground, where they were engaged in licking the earth for the salt with which it was impregnated. As the men advanced, the huge beasts scattered in every direction, some running, some walking, others loping carelessly along with young calves skipping and bounding at their sides. Such a sight was common enough in Kentucky at that time, but soon after the advent of white men the great herds of bison moved westward. The pioneers immediately commenced the erection of a fort and raised a few cabins along the river bank, but it was long before the stockade of Boonesborough, as the settlement was named, was completed. In the absence of women, it was hard to induce the backwoodsmen to devote themselves to measures of defence while such tempting opportunities for hunting presented themselves. They were a self-confident and somewhat reckless lot. Their first thought was to mark off a claim by a rude method of surveying which entailed endless after trouble. Their second, to pursue the game which abounded in a plenteousness far surpassing anything in their past experience.