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 killed 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 Eudlow, who had been Symmes' surveyor. This gentleman, with Colonel Patterson, 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

i

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 irformed

him that he was about to visit and organize the Miami purchase, Symmes doubted much whether a new town which he had laid out at South Bend, or Losantiville, would be best fitted for the county seat; but as the former was more central, thought that, if it were made the county towa, "it would probably take the lead of the present village (Losantiville) until the city can be made somewhat considerable."

But the mind of this persevering and just man, which had never been at ease since he first embarked in the enterprise of reclaiming the wilderness, was to be still further tried. The Kentuckians, seeing that he, by his clemency, his moderation, and his firmness, still remained on good terms with the Indians, and that settlers were flocking to his lands, represented the boasted fertility of the soil as a lie, and the safety of the settlers as a delusion. Some even threatened to make it so, by destroying every Indian they could find in the Miami purchase. The soldiers that were with him were idle, disobliging, and burdensome. His surveyors and settlers were "at times put to great shifts from want of bread." Continental certificates were rising, and his purchase was endangered by the difficulty of obtaining them. Many, that had bought of him on speculation, threw up their contracts. Then came information, that the British were urging the Indians to war; and his expected recruits did not come. Next was actual warfare, and his settlers left him fifty at one time. And, to complete his disquiet, his friends beyond the mountains wrote to him, that great attempts would be made to turn him from the bench; that he was universally disliked, almost hated by the settlers, and that his eastern co-proprietors were displeased by his management.

The perils of warfare Symmes was prepared to meet. At the beginning he had said, "Disasters I expect; if I can prevent a defeat, it is as much as I hope for the first year; we may talk of treaties as we please; I am certain we must fight or leave the ground." And now that the day of trial was near by he shrunk not. "What will be the issue," he says, "God only knows. I shall maintain the ground as long as I possibly can, ill prepared as we are. I can but perish, as many a

better man has done before me."

But dislike and opposition, which his heart assured him he had not merited, he did not meet without suffering. While yet on his way to the West in the summer of 1788, he said of his accusers, that "the only revenge he wished to have against them was, that they might have equal success in their views, attended with equal calumny and censure; " for which he thought he had "pretty good security, if they undertook to do business for many; " and the bitterness, which he then tasted, was in creased every year that he lived.

It was not destined, however, that this frontier post of the West should perish. In June, a force of a hundred and forty men was sent to Cincinnati; and Fort Washington was commenced, upon the spot since made classic by the Bazaar of Mistress Trollope. In December, this band was increased to four hundred and forty, by the arrival of General Harmar, who was about to march against the Indians of the Maumee and Wabash. At this time Losantiville contained eleven families and twenty-four bachelors, beside the garrison.