Robertson’s party started in the fall, being both preceded and followed by other companies of settlers, some of whom were accompanied by their wives and children.  Cold weather of extraordinary severity set in during November; for this was the famous “hard winter” of ’79-80, during which the Kentucky settlers suffered so much.  They were not molested by Indians, and reached the Bluff about Christmas.  The river was frozen solid, and they all crossed the ice in a body; when in mid-stream the ice jarred, and—­judging from the report—­the jar or crack must have gone miles up and down the stream; but the ice only settled a little and did not break.  By January first there were over two hundred people scattered on both sides of the river.  In Robertson’s company was a man named John Rains, who brought with him twenty-one horned cattle and seventeen horses; the only cattle and horses which any of the immigrants succeeded in bringing to the Cumberland.  But he was not the only man who had made the attempt.  One of the immigrants who went in Donelson’s flotilla, Daniel Dunham by name, offered his brother John, who went by land, L100 to drive along his horses and cattle.  John accepted, and tried his best to fulfil his share of the bargain; but he was seemingly neither a very expert woodsman nor yet a good stock hand.  There is no form of labor more arduous and dispiriting than driving unruly and unbroken stock along a faint forest or mountain trail, especially in bad weather; and this the would-be drover speedily found out.  The animals would not follow the trail; they incessantly broke away from it, got lost, scattered in the brush, and stampeded at night.  Finally the unfortunate John, being, as he expressed it, nearly “driven mad by the drove,” abandoned them all in the wilderness. [Footnote:  MSS. on “Dunham Pioneers,” in Nashville Hist.  Society.  Daniel, a veteran stockman, was very angry when he heard what had happened.]

    Voyage of the “Adventure.”

The settlers who came by water passed through much greater peril and hardship.  By a stroke of good fortune the journal kept by Donelson, the leader of the expedition, has been preserved. [Footnote:  Original MS.  “Journal of Voyage intended by God’s permission in the good boat Adventure from Fort Patrick Henry of Holston River to the French Salt Springs on Cumberland River, kept by John Donelson.”  An abstract, with some traditional statements interwoven, is given by Haywood; the journal itself, with some inaccuracies, and the name of the writer misspelt by Ramsey; and in much better and fuller shape by A. N. Putnam in his “History of Middle Tennessee.”  I follow the original, in the Nashville Historical Society.] As with all the other recorded wanderings and explorations of these backwoods adventurers, it must be remembered that while this trip was remarkable in itself, it is especially noteworthy because, out of many such, it is the only one of which we have a full account.  The adventures that befell Donelson’s