The incoming settlers were therefore left in comparative peace.  They built many small palisaded towns, some of which proved permanent, while others vanished utterly when the fear of the Indians was removed and the families were able to scatter out on their farms.  At the Falls of the Ohio a regular fort was built, armed with cannon and garrisoned by Virginia troops, [Footnote:  One hundred and fifty strong, under Col.  George Slaughter.] who were sent down the river expressly to reinforce Clark.  The Indians never dared assail this fort; but they ravaged up to its walls, destroying the small stations on Bear Grass Creek and scalping settlers and soldiers when they wandered far from the protection of the stockade.

    The Hard Winter.

The new-comers of 1779 were destined to begin with a grim experience, for the ensuing winter [Footnote:  Boon, in his Narrative, makes a mistake in putting this hard winter a year later; all the other authorities are unanimous against him.] was the most severe ever known in the west, and was long recalled by the pioneers as the “hard winter.”  Cold weather set in towards the end of November, the storms following one another in unbroken succession, while the snow lay deep until the spring.  Most of the cattle, and very many of the horses, perished; and deer and elk were likewise found dead in the woods, or so weak and starved that they would hardly move out of the way, while the buffalo often came up at nightfall to the yards, seeking to associate with the starving herds of the settlers. [Footnote:  McAfee MSS.  Of the McAfees’ horses ten died, and only two survived, a brown mare and “a yellow horse called Chickasaw.”  Exactly a hundred years later, in the hard winter of 1879-80, and the still worse winter of 1880-81, the settlers on the Yellowstone and the few hunters who wintered on the Little Missouri had a similar experience.  The buffalo crowded with the few tame cattle round the hayricks and log-stables; the starving deer and antelope gathered in immense bands in sheltered places.  Riding from my ranch to a neighbor’s I have, in deep snows, passed through herds of antelope that would barely move fifty or a hundred feet out of my way.] The scanty supply of corn gave out, until there was not enough left to bake into johnny-cakes on the long boards in front of the fire. [Footnote:  Do.] Even at the Falls, where there were stores for the troops, the price of corn went up nearly fourfold, [Footnote:  From fifty dollars (Continental money) a bushel in the fall to one hundred and seventy-five in the spring.] while elsewhere among the stations of the interior it could not be had at any price, and there was an absolute dearth both of salt and of vegetable food, the settlers living for weeks on the flesh of the lean wild game, [Footnote:  McAfee MSS.] especially of the buffalo. [Footnote:  Boon’s Narrative.] The hunters searched with especial eagerness for the bears in the hollow trees, for they alone among the