Either in the autumn of 1778 or the spring of 1779 (history is not certain which), the garrison on Corn Island went ashore and laid the foundation of the future city of Louisville. Huts, blockhouses and stockades were erected, and the Indians saw that the intruders had come to stay. During the year 1779, Colonel Clark directed his energies against the British post Vincennes, and easily captured it. [Illustration: BLOCKHOUSE AND LOG CABINS ON CORN ISLAND, 1778. FIRST SETTLEMENT OF LOUISVILLE, KY. _From an old print in the possession of Col. R. T. Durrett, Louisville, Ky._] In May, 1780, the Virginia Legislature passed an “Act for Establishing the Town of Louisville at the Falls of Ohio.” The population of the place had increased to six hundred; but the increase of strength rendered the pioneers careless, and as a consequence the Indians on several occasions surprised and captured parties beyond the protection of the fort and escaped with them across the river, or into the wilderness to the south, almost before an alarm could be given. Colonel Clark, in order to ward off the attacks of the red men, constructed a unique sort of gunboat supplied with four-pound cannon. It was the first actual vessel of war ever seen on the Ohio, and though some chroniclers are disposed to make light of its actual utility as a means of defence, it kept the insidious savages from crossing the river in its vicinity. This period in the history of Kentucky (1780-1800) was admirably portrayed by the facile pen of Washington Irving after his literary tour of the West in 1834, when he visited Louisville and took notes for future sketches. An eccentric though shrewd character of the day, William P. Duval, whose career as a pioneer lawyer, and whose adventures as an Indian commissioner under Monroe gave him fame scarcely second to that of George Rogers Clark, inspired those two narratives in _Crayon Papers_, called “The Early Experiences of Ralph Ringwood,” and “The Conspiracy of Neamathla.” Mr. Irving’s humor is at its best in the first of these and his picture of primitive people is unsurpassed. James K. Paulding likewise wrote of Governor Duval in a novel called _Nimrod Wildfire_. [Illustration: RESIDENCE OF GEORGE ROGERS CLARK ON THE INDIANA SHORE, OPPOSITE LOUISVILLE. FROM AN OLD PRINT IN THE POSSESSION OF COL. R. T. DURRETT, LOUISVILLE, KY.]