[112] Mast Creek cannot be identified with certainty, as there are several small creeks where Lewis and Clark locate it, fourteen and a half miles above Cedar Island. The name was given because of an accident to the mast of their vessel.--ED. [113] Nashville was laid out in 1819, on land owned by a man named Nash. The site was on the river, just below Providence, Boone County, but the town was destroyed by a change of the channel. The site of Smithton was a half mile west of the court house in the town of Columbia, but the difficulty in obtaining water there led to removal in 1820 to the site of Columbia. The original town was named Smithton in honor of Thomas A. Smith, land office register at Franklin. See _post_, note 118.--ED. [114] Roche à Pierce is a corruption of a phrase meaning "pierced rock," which has been restored in the present name of the stream (Roche Percée). The mouth of the river is just above Providence. On some maps, Splice Creek is Spice Creek.--ED. [115] The Little Saline (Petite Saline) flows from the south. Big Manito Creek (now corrupted to Moniteau) debouches at Rocheport, on the north side of the river. Another Moniteau Creek enters the Missouri from the south, at the Thousand Islands, near the boundary between Cole and Moniteau counties.--ED. [116] The disaster feared actually occurred in 1828. Franklin was laid off in 1816, being named for the famous Philadelphian. For a decade it was a town of considerable importance. It was the county seat, contained the United States land office, and was the point of departure for the Santa Fé country. Most of the inhabitants hailed from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, and at one time numbered between fifteen hundred and two thousand. When the encroachments of the river drove away the residents, they founded New Franklin, two miles distant, and thereafter the earlier site was known as Old Franklin.--ED. [117] In compact limestone, which had been subjected to the action of fire, we observed segments of encrinites becoming easily detached. They were three-fifths of an inch in diameter, varying to the size of fine sand. At Boonsville we found a small ostrea and a terebratula, in carbonate of lime.--JAMES. [118] Thomas A. Smith, a native of Virginia, attained the rank of brigadier-general during the War of 1812-15. Resigning his commission in 1818, he was appointed receiver of the land office at Old Franklin, Missouri. In 1826 he removed to a large tract of prairie land on Salt Fork, Saline County, about eight miles from Marshall. This being one of the earliest attempts to occupy prairie land, Smith called his estate "Experiment." He was an intimate friend of Senator Thomas A. Benton. See volume xvi of our series, note 91, for his military record.--ED. {87} CHAPTER V