Gist came to know only a little, but this little was the beginning of a revelation.
After crossing the Ohio, Gist journeyed over a hundred miles down the southern bank of the river, and on March eighteenth crossed "the lower Salt Lick Creek," the Licking River. Reports of Indians at the "Falls" and "the footsteps of some Indians plain on the Ground" made him desist from visiting that spot, but he took down descriptions of it. On the nineteenth he turned southward into the interior. On the twentieth he ascended Pilot Knob, near Clay City, Powell County, and writes of the view from that height from which he saw, as John Finley wrote later, "with pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucky."
With but a glimpse of the good lands of Kentucky, Gist, like Walker before him, journeyed into the mountainous country to the southeast. For a month he floundered around in the desolate laurel ridges where Walker had spent so many distressing days the year before. On Red River Gist crossed Walker's route and came on homeward between Walker's outward and homeward courses. From Red River he went through
