and, but for the representations of some of his friends our adventurer would have lost his bargain, his labor, and his money. Nor was this all. In February, 1788, he had been appointed one of the judges of the Northwest Territory, in the place of Mr. Armstrong, who declined serv ing. This appointment gave offense to some; and others were envious of the great fortune which it was thought he would make. Some of his associates complained of him, also, probably because of his endangering the contract to which they had become parties. With these murmurs and reproaches behind him, he saw before him danger, delay, suffering, and, perhaps, ultimate failure and ruin; and, although hopeful by nature, apparently he felt discouraged and sad. However, a visit to his purchase, where he landed on the twenty-second of September, revived his spirits; and upon his return to Maysville, he wrote to Jonathan Dayton, of New Jersey, who had become interested with him, that he thought some of the land near the Great Miami "positively worth a silver dollar per acre, in its present state."

But, though this view of the riches now almost within his grasp somewhat reassured Symmes's mind, he had still enough to trouble him. The Indians were threatening; in Kentucky, he says, "they are perpetually doing mischief; a man a week, I believe, falls by their hands;" but still government gave him little help toward defending himself; for, while three hundred men were stationed at Muskingum, he had "but one ensign and seventeen men for the protection and defense of 'the Slaughter-house,' as the Miami valley was called by the dwellers upon the "dark and bloody ground" of "Kentucke." And, when Captain Kearny and forty-five soldiers came to Maysville in December, they came without provisions, and made bad worse. Nor did their coming answer any purpose; for, when a little band of settlers were ready to go, under their protection, to the mouth of the Miami, the grand city of Symmes that was to be, the ice stove their boats, their cattle were drowned, and their provisions lost, and so the settlement was prevented. But the fertile mind of a man like our adventurer, could, even under these circumstances, find comfort in the anticipation of what was to come. In the words of Return Jonathan Meigs, the first Ohio poet with whom we have any acquaintance,

"To him glad Fancy brightest prospects shows,
Rejoicing nature all around him glows;
Where late the savage, hid in ambush, lay,
Or roamed the uncultured valleys for his prey,

Her hardy gifts rough Industry extends,
The groves bow down, the lofty forest bends;
And see the spires of towns and cities rise,

And domes and temples swell into the skies."

But alas! so far as his pet city was concerned, "glad Fancy" proved but a gay deceiver; for there came "an amazing high freshet," and "the Point," as it was, and still is called, was fifteen feet under water.

But, before Symmes left Maysville, which was upon the twenty-ninth of January, 1797, two settlements had been made within his purchase. The first was by Mr. Stiles, the original projector of the whole plan; who,

with other Redstone people, had located themselves at the mouth of the Little Miami, where the Indians had been led by the great fertility of the soil to make a partial clearing. To this point, on the eighteenth of November, came twenty-six persons, who built a block-house, named their town Columbia, and prepared for a winter of want and hard fighting. But they were agreeably disappointed; the Indians came to them, and, though the whites answered, as Symmes says, "in a black-guarding manner," the savages sued for peace. One at whom a rifle was presented, took off his cap, trailed his gun, and held out his right hand, by which pacific gestures he induced the Americans to consent to their entrance into the block-houses. In a few days this good understanding ripened into intimacy, "the hunters frequently taking shelter for the night in the Indian camps; " and the red men and squaws "spending whole days and nights" at Columbia, "regaling themselves with whisky." This friendly demeanor on the part of the Indians, was owing to the. kind and just conduct of Symmes himself; who, during the preceding September, when examining the country about the Great Miami, had prevented some Kentuckians, who were in his company, from injuring a band of the savages that came within their power; which proceeding, he says, "the Kentuckians thought unpardonable."

The Columbia settlement was, however, like that proposed at the Point, upon land that was under water during the high rise in January, 1789. "But one house escaped the deluge." The soldiers were driven from the ground-floor of their block-house into the loft, and from the loft into the solitary boat which the ice had spared.

This flood deserves to be commemorated in an epic; for, while it demonstrated the dangers to which the three chosen spots of all Ohio, Marietta, Columbia, and the Point, must ever be exposed, it also proved the safety and led to the rapid settlement of Losantiville. The great recommendation of the spot upon which Denman and his comrades proposed to build their "Mosaic" town, as it has been called, appears to have been the fact that it lay opposite the Licking; the terms of Denman's purchase having been, that his warrants were to be located, as nearly as possible, over against the mouth of that river; though the advantage of the noble and high plain at that point could not have escaped any eye. But the freshet of 1789 placed its superiority over other points more strongly to the view than anything else could have done.

We have said that Filson was kilied in September, or early in October, 1788. As nothing had been paid upon his third of the plat of Losantiville, his heirs made no claim upon it, and it was transferred to Israel Ludlow, who had been Symmes' surveyor. This gentleman, with Colonel PatterBon, one of the other proprietors, and well known in the Indian wars, with about fourteen others, left Maysville upon the twenty-fourth of December, 1788, "to form a station and lay off a town opposite the Licking." The river was filled with ice "from shore to shore; " but, says Symmes, in May, 1789, "perseverance triumphing over difficulty, they landed safe on a most delightful high bank of the Ohio, where they founded the town of Losantiville, which populate considerably."

It is a curious fact, and one of many in Western history that may

well tend to shake our faith in the learned discussions as to the dates and localities with which scholars now and then amuse the world, that the date of the settlement of Cincinnati is unknown, even though we have the testimony of the very men that made the settlement. Judge Symmes says, in one of his letters, "On the 24th of December, 1788, Colonel Patterson, of Lexington, who is concerned with Mr. Denman in the section at the mouth of Licking river, sailed from Limestone," &c. Some supposing it would take about two days to make the voyage, have dated the being of the Queen City of the West from December 26th. This is but guess-work, however; for, as the river was full of ice, it might have taken ten days to have gone the sixty miles from Maysville to the Licking. But, in a case in chancery, we have the evidence of Patterson and Ludlow, that they landed opposite the Licking "in the month of January, 1789;" while William M'Millan testifies, that he "was one of those who formed the settlement of Cincinnati on the 28th of December, 1788." As we know of nothing more conclusive on the subject than these statements, we must leave this question in the same darkness that we find it, and proceed to more certain events.

The settlers of Losantiville built a few log-huts and block-houses, and proceeded to lay out the town; though they placed their dwellings in the most exposed situation, yet, says Symmes, they "suffered nothing from the freshet." The judge spent a little time with them, and then fell down to North Bend, accompanied by the small army which had been allowed him for his protection. Here they built "a camp," "by setting two forks of saplings in the ground, a ridgepole across, and leaning boatboards, which had been brought from Maysville, one end on the ground and the other against the ridgepole; enclosing one end, and leaving the other open for a door, where the fire was built to keep out the cold, which was very intense."

Finding his point to be so low, that the city could not be safely built there, unless, as he says, "you raise her like Venice out of the waters," he surveyed the grounds between the north bend of the Ohio and the Miami; thinking a plan might be arranged so as to have the advantage of both rivers still, it being but a mile across the isthmus. He found the land, however, to be too hilly and broken, and was forced to content himself with a small town-plat reaching a mile and a half along the Ohio, of which he offered the alternate lots to settlers, of whom forty came within two months, and built themselves "comfortable log-cabins.

But his longing for a city still continued, and after much consideration, he determined in favor of a spot twelve miles up the Miami, and within half an hour's ride from North Bend; he preferred this to the Ohio shore, because he thought it far better to concentrate the trade of the Miami valley, than to be one of the many cities along the larger stream. The Miami was then considered navigable, and was for many years afterward navigated by keel and flat boats; and, in Symmes' estimation, the country about the river was "superior in point of soil, water, and timber, to any tract of equal dimensions to be found in the United States." The hope that a great city was to arise at this point, long continued to comfort the harrassed mind of the projector; and when St. Clair informed