and Mason counties.... The command 'Forward!' rang through the woods and echoed along the hillsides, and down the fateful trace to the Blue Licks ford the cavalcade pursued its march. At the point where the trace strikes the Licking the valley is a quarter of a mile wide. It is two hundred feet on the western side, where the Kentucky pioneers emerged from the forest, and some eight hundred feet wide on the east side, where the foe for hours had been waiting the advance of the pursuers, whose presence by this time was thoroughly known to them.... Across the Licking the trace followed up the hillside of the ridge, which was rocky and barren of all trees and vegetation. For ages the buffaloes had come to these licks to find salt. Instinct had taught them the necessity of periodical visitations to these saline springs, where nature had provided this essential for animal life, and for hundreds of years, along these narrow paths, cut out of the woods by the ceaseless trampings of these mighty herds of buffalo, had come millions of these animals to find health and life in the waters which gushed from the Licking bottom. When they had satisfied nature's call for salt, these herds would climb the adjacent hills to lie down and rest through the day and sleep through the night. On these eminences thousands of them would stand and watch the incoming buffaloes as they emerged from the trace on the western side, and, plunging into the waters of the Licking, swim across the stream and slake nature's demand for this necessary product, which here the Great Provider for all animal life had laid up in unlimited quantity.... The backbone of the ridge along which the fight was to occur was about four hundred and fifty feet in width. Trigg was ordered to the right, and his route was close to the edge of the ravine which comes up from the bank of the Licking and reaches the top of the hill close to the point where the Sardis turnpike leaves the Lexington and Maysville road."[114] The favorite paths of the settlers were these "traces" made hard as modern roads by the herds which had traversed them. Even the first main street of Lexington was almost impassable in bad weather, and was deserted for the road of the buffalo near by.[115] With the passing of the buffalo, their old routes became clogged in time with wind-strewn brush and fallen trees; but, so good was the course and so solid the footing, that the pioneers cleared these routes in preference to opening roads of their own. A specific illustration of this is noted by a Lexington historian: "A buffalo 'trace' fortunately ran from this station [Bryant's] close to Lexington, and the settlers of both places joined forces in clearing it of logs, undergrowth, and other obstructions; a wise measure as subsequent events proved, for, owing to it, the troops from Lexington that went to the assistance of the besieged station, in 1782, were enabled to reach it much sooner than they could otherwise have done."[116]