Jake had not exaggerated.  Gentlemen from Moore’s Settlement, from Sullivan’s Station on the Bear Grass,—­to be brief, the entire male population of the county seemed to have moved upon Louisville after the barbecue, and I paused involuntarily at the sight which met my eyes as I came into the street.  A score of sputtering, smoking pine-knots threw a lurid light on as many hilarious groups, and revealed, fantastically enough, the boles and lower branches of the big shade trees above them.  Navigation for the individual, difficult enough lower down, in front of the tavern became positively dangerous.  There was a human eddy,—­nay, a maelstrom would better describe it.  Fights began, but ended abortively by reason of the inability of the combatants to keep their feet; one man whose face I knew passed me with his hat afire, followed by several companions in gusts of laughter, for the torch-bearers were careless and burned the ears of their friends in their enthusiasm.  Another person whom I recognized lacked a large portion of the front of his attire, and seemed sublimely unconscious of the fact.  His face was badly scratched.  Several other friends of mine were indulging in brief intervals of rest on the ground, and I barely avoided stepping on them.  Still other gentlemen were delivering themselves of the first impressive periods of orations, only to be drowned by the cheers of their auditors.  These were the snatches which I heard as I picked my way onward with exaggerated fear:—­

“Gentlemen, the Mississippi is ours, let the tyrants who forbid its use beware!” “To hell with the Federal government!” “I tell you, sirs, this land is ours.  We have conquered it with our blood, and I reckon no Spaniard is goin’ to stop us.  We ain’t come this far to stand still.  We settled Kaintuck, fit off the redskins, and we’ll march across the Mississippi and on and on—­” “To Louisiany!” they shouted, and the whole crowd would take it up, “To Louisiany!  Open the river!”

So absorbed was I in my own safety and progress that I did not pause to think (as I have often thought since) of the full meaning of this, though I had marked it for many years.  The support given to Wilkinson’s plots, to Clark’s expedition, was merely the outward and visible sign of the onward sweep of a resistless race.  In spite of untold privations and hardships, of cruel warfare and massacre, these people had toiled over the mountains into this land, and impatient of check or hindrance would, even as Clark had predicted, when their numbers were sufficient leap the Mississippi.  Night or day, drunk or sober, they spoke of this thing with an ever increasing vehemence, and no man of reflection who had read their history could say that they would be thwarted.  One day Louisiana would be theirs and their children’s for the generations to come.  One day Louisiana would be American.