carried on by order of the Executive for the past eighteen months had been a detriment rather than a help.  The utmost confusion and discouragement prevailed everywhere. [Footnote:  Va.  State Papers, III., pp. 301, 331.  Letter of William Christian, September 28th.  Petition of Boon, Todd, Netherland, etc., September 11th.  In Morehead’s “address” is a letter from Nathaniel Hart.  He was himself as a boy, witness of what he describes.  His father, who had been Henderson’s partner and bore the same name as himself, was from North Carolina.  He founded in Kentucky a station known as White Oak Springs; and was slain by the savages during this year.  The letter runs:  “It is impossible at this day to make a just impression of the sufferings of the pioneers about the period spoken of.  The White Oak Springs fort in 1782, with perhaps one hundred souls in it was reduced in August to three fighting white men—­and I can say with truth that for two or three weeks my mother’s family never unclothed themselves to sleep, nor were all of them within that time at their meals together, nor was any household business attempted.  Food was prepared and placed where those who chose could eat.  It was the period when Bryant’s station was beseiged, and for many days before and after that gloomy event we were in constant expectation of being made prisoners.  We made application to Col.  Logan for a guard and obtained one, but not until the danger was measureably over.  It then consisted of two men only.  Col.  Logan did every thing in his power, as County Lieutenant, to sustain the different forts—­but it was not a very easy matter to order a married man from a fort where his family was to defend some other when his own was in imminent danger.

“I went with my mother in January, 1783, to Logan’s station to prove my father’s will.  He had fallen in the preceding July.  Twenty armed men were of the party.  Twenty-three widows were in attendance upon the court to obtain letters of administration on the estates of their husbands who had been killed during the past year.”

The letter also mentions that most of the original settlers of the fort were from Pennsylvania, “orderly respectable people and the men good soldiers.  But they were unaccustomed to Indian warfare, and the consequence was that of some ten or twelve men all were killed but two or three.”  This incident illustrates the folly of the hope, at one time entertained, that the Continental troops, by settling in the west on lands granted them, would prove a good barrier against the Indians; the best Continentals in Washington’s army would have been almost as helpless as British grenadiers in the woods.]

    Clark’s Counter-Stroke.