When they reached the mouth of the Kentucky[43] they found two Delawares and a squaw, to whom they gave corn and salt.  Here they split up, and Floyd and his original party spent a week in the neighborhood, surveying land, going some distance up the Kentucky to a salt lick, where they saw a herd of three hundred buffalo.[44] They then again embarked, and drifted down the Ohio.  On May 26th they met two Delawares in a canoe flying a red flag; they had been sent down the river with a pass from the commandant at Fort Pitt to gather their hunters and get them home, in view of the threatened hostilities between the Shawnees and Virginians.[45] The actions of the two Indians were so suspicious, and the news they brought was so alarming, that some of Floyd’s companions became greatly alarmed, and wished to go straight on down the Mississippi; but Floyd swore that he would finish his work unless actually forced off.  Three days afterwards they reached the Falls.

Here Floyd spent a fortnight, making surveys in every direction, and then started off to explore the land between the Salt River and the Kentucky.  Like the others, he carried his own pack, which consisted of little but his blanket and his instruments.  He sometimes had difficulties with his men; one of them refused to carry the chain one day, and went off to hunt, got lost, and was not found for thirty-six hours.  Another time it was noticed that two of the hunters had become sullen, and seemed anxious to leave camp.  The following morning, while on the march, the party killed an elk and halted for breakfast; but the two hunters walked on, and, says the journal, “we never saw them more”; but whether they got back to the settlements or perished in the wilderness, none could tell.

The party suffered much hardship.  Floyd fell sick, and for three days could not travel.  They gave him an “Indian sweat,” probably building just such a little sweat-house as the Indians use to this day.  Others of their number at different times fell ill; and they were ever on the watch for Indians.  In the vast forests, every sign of a human being was the sign of a probable enemy.  Once they heard a gun, and another time a sound as of a man calling to another; and on each occasion they redoubled their caution, keeping guard as they rested, and at night extinguishing their camp-fire and sleeping a mile or two from it.

They built a bark canoe in which to cross the Kentucky, and on the 1st of July they met another party of surveyors on the banks of that stream.[46] Two or three days afterwards, Floyd and three companions left the others, agreeing to meet them on August 1st, at a cabin built by a man named Harwood, on the south side of the Kentucky, a few miles from the mouth of the Elkhorn.  For three weeks they surveyed and hunted, enchanted with the beauty of the country.[47] They then went to the cabin, several days before the appointed time; but to their surprise found every thing scattered over