It was not until 1778 that LouisVille, as it was then called, was founded, George Rogers Clarke being a resident of Harrodsburg, Ky., during the years 1776 and 1777. The incidents connected with the settlement he established at the Falls are memorable in the annals of the West. The British leaders were seeking to strike an effectual blow at all the American frontier fortresses, and with this end in view were enlisting the sympathies and co-operation of the Indian tribes. Detroit, Vincennes, Kaskaskia and similar British stations were well fortified, and plans were speedily forming for a descent on the unprepared and unsuspecting pioneers in the Ohio Valley. Clark instinctively discerned this scheme and secretly but courageously determined to thwart it. He accordingly went to Williamsburg, Va., in November, 1777. The news of Burgoyne’s surrender had inspired the Virginia authorities with patriotic enthusiasm, and Governor Henry sanctioned Clark’s proposal to raise a sufficient force to proceed against the British in the Northwest. Orders were issued and Clark was put in command of the expedition. Six thousand dollars in colonial currency were voted him, and with the rank of Colonel he set out for Pittsburg. After much discouragement he secured three companies of volunteers and a number of adventurers and continued his journey down the river to the Falls. The fort that he built on his arrival furnished a nucleus around which the village subsequently sprang up. Thirteen families remained at the Falls while Clark and his men went on against Kaskaskia. The campaign was a brilliant success. One post after another fell into the hands of the fearless Kentuckians, and the whole of the Northwest Territory was opened to emigration. It is said that when Clark and his followers appeared before the astonished garrisons during these operations, the red-coats almost imagined a force had dropped from the skies, so inaccessible had they deemed their strongholds to be, and so suddenly had their conquerors come upon them. It was not strange, therefore, that the eloquent John Randolph of Roanoke spoke of Clark in after years as the “American Hannibal, who, by the reduction of those military posts in the wilderness, obtained the Lakes for the northern boundary of our Union at the peace in 1783.” If the visitor desires to see the location of the first settlement at the Falls let him stand upon the Fourteenth Street Bridge and look down the river. To the right is the main current of the Ohio as it plunges roaring over the Falls, and to the left is the island on which Colonel Clark and his men built a fort when they arrived in the spring of 1778. This was called “Corn Island,” from the fact that a crop of corn was planted by the risky pioneers around the fortress, and carefully cultivated, notwithstanding they were hourly exposed to Indian attacks.