During this summer Gallatin kept a brief diary, so that it is possible
to follow all his movements. Leaving Richmond on the 31st of March,
alone, on horseback, he ascended James River, crossed the Blue Ridge
near the Peaks of Otter, and arrived at the Court-House of Greenbrier
County on the 18th April. Having seen the surveyor and attended to his
locations of land, he started northwards on the 21st, and on the 29th
reached his headquarters at Clare's on George's Creek. Here Savary
joined him, and after making their preparations they set off on the 26th
May, and descended the Ohio with their surveying party to the mouth of
Little Sandy Creek, where from June 3 to July 1 they were engaged in
surveying, varied by building a log cabin, clearing land, and
occasionally killing a bear or a buffalo. On the 1st July, Gallatin,
leaving Savary and four men at "Friends' Landing" to carry on the work,
set off by water for the Grand Kanawha, and surveyed country about the
head-waters of the Big Sandy and between the Elk and the Pocotaligo. On
August 13 he descended the Pocotaligo, and on the 15th, striking across
country to the southward, he reached "Meeting Camp," on the Elk, and
received letters from Savary announcing that the Indians had broken up
his operations on the Ohio and compelled him to abandon the cabin and
clearing.
This Indian outbreak deranged all their plans. It had been their
intention to settle on these lands between the two Kanawhas, and for
this purpose they had engaged men, built the log cabin, and cleared
several acres on the banks of the Ohio adjoining the lands located by
General Washington and known as "Washington's Bottom." They themselves,
it is true, were not directly molested by the Indians, but boats had
been captured and emigrants murdered a few miles from their settlement.
They were obliged to abandon their plan and to return to Clare's. This
wild attempt to make his home in an utter solitude one hundred and
twenty miles beyond the last house then inhabited on the banks of the
Ohio, was obviously impracticable even to Gallatin's mind, without
incurring imminent danger of massacre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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