As soon as the purchase was assured, the Ohio Company started systematic preparation for settlement. Putnam was elected superintendent. Plans were made in Boston for a city of 4000 acres with wide streets and public parks at the mouth of the Muskingum. One hundred houses were to be constructed on three sides of a square for the reception of settlers. For making surveys and preparing for immigrants, the superintendent was ordered to employ four surveyors and 22 assistants, six boat builders, four house carpenters, one blacksmith, and nine laborers. Each man was required to furnish himself with rifle, bayonet, six flints, powder horn and pouch, half a pound of powder, one pound of balls, and one pound of buckshot. Surveyors were to receive $27 a month, and laborers $4 per month and board. Although these plans were made when it was midwinter and travel was difficult, no time was to be lost. These were men of action. They had waited over three years for Congress to make it possible to carry out their purposes. Putnam decided to lead an advance expedition to the Muskingum to be ready for surveying and building and planting early in the spring, and in _five weeks_ after the land contract was signed, they were on their way. There is a substantial lesson in this for us who today profess heartfelt desires and intensities of purpose. Ahead of these men lay months of winter, severe enough in the settled communities but far more to be feared in the hazardous wilderness of the Alleghany Mountains. Travel by foot, for 800 miles with a plodding ox team for part of their baggage, over the roughest of roads and uncharted trails, and across swollen streams was to be their lot. So severe was the risk that no women could accompany the party. During the trip and at its end possible Indian attacks endangered them. Such was their prospect which they faced cheerfully, unflinchingly and enthusiastically. [Illustration: PIONEER PARTY _Drawn by Betty Kimmell, Vincennes, Ind._]