But the fame of the Kentucky country was now widespread, and its settlement was near at hand. In 1774 James Harrod of Virginia, with fifty men, floated down the Ohio River in flatboats, and, ascending the Kentucky River, selected the present site of Harrodsburg as a place for a settlement and built some cabins. The place was given the name of Harrodstown (afterward Harrodsburg) and was the first permanent settlement in Kentucky. The next year Boone safely reached Kentucky and founded the town of Boonesborough. In 1775 Lexington also was founded. "When the embattled farmers fired the shot heard round the world, a party of hunters heard the echo and baptized the station they were building Lexington." Louisville was founded in 1777. While Boone and his followers were laying the foundation for a State on the banks of the Kentucky, other pioneers from North Carolina and Virginia were laying the foundations for another State on the banks of streams that flow into the Tennessee. In the very year (1769) that Boone visited the blue-grass region, William Bean of Virginia built himself a log cabin on the Watauga River. Pioneers came and settled near Bean, and in a short time several hundred people had their homes on the banks of the Watauga. This Watauga settlement was the beginning of the State of Tennessee. North Carolina continued to let her Western children shift for themselves, until at last for their own defense and safety they organized as a separate State, and called the new State Franklin, in honor of Benjamin Franklin. John Sevier, the greatest of the early leaders in Tennessee, was elected governor of Franklin, and Greenville was made the capital of the State. But the State of Franklin had only a short life. North Carolina came forward promptly and asserted her rights, and by 1788 the officers of Franklin were all driven from power, the new State was dead, and North Carolina was again in full control of Tennessee. [Illustration: Kentucky, Tennessee, and Early Ohio.] In the rapid and wonderful growth of Kentucky and Tennessee we see the first-fruits of the Westward Movement. Here out of the wilderness south of the Ohio had sprung up, almost overnight, two prosperous, populous, well-organized commonwealths, States that almost at once could hold their heads as high as the oldest and proudest of their sisters. THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY; THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.