with buffalo, bears, deer, and all sorts of wild game, in such plenty, that we killed out of our boats as much as we wanted. We proceeded down the river to the Buffalo Bottom, about ten miles from the beginning of the Big Bend, where we encamped. The country on both sides of the river, much the same as we passed the day before. This day we passed nine islands, all lying high out of the water.
22d.—At half an hour past 5 o'clock, set off and sailed
to a place, called Alum Hill, so called from the great
quantity of that mineral found there by the Indians; this
place lies about ten miles from Buffalo Bottom;[1] thence
we sailed to the mouth of Great Conhawa River,[2]
being ten miles from the Alum Hill. The course of the
river, from the Great Bend to this place, is mostly west;
from hence we proceeded down to Little Guyondott
River, where we encamped, about thirty miles from Great
Conhawa; the country still fine and level; the bank of the
river high, with abundance of creeks and rivulets falling
into it. This day we passed six fine islands. In the
evening one of our Indians discovered three Cherokees
near our encampment, which obliged our Indians to keep
————
- ↑ The "Big Bend" of the river is that now known as Pomeroy's Bend, from the Ohio town at its upper point. Alum Hill was probably West Columbia, Mason County, West Virginia. See Lewis, History of West Virginia (Philadelphia, 1889), p. 109.—Ed.
- ↑ The Kanawha takes its name from a tribe of Indians who formerly lived in its valley, but they were destroyed by the Iroquois in the early eighteenth century. Céloron called it the Chinondaista, and at its mouth buried a plate which is now in the museum of the Virginia Historical Society, at Richmond. Gist surveyed here for the Ohio Company in 1752; later, Washington owned ten thousand acres in the vicinity, and visited the spot in 1774. That same year, the battle of Point Pleasant was fought at the mouth of the Kanawha by Colonel Andrew Lewis's division of Lord Dunmore's army; and the succeeding year, Fort Randolph was built to protect the frontiers. Daniel Boone retired hither from Kentucky, and lived in this neighborhood four years (1791-95), before migrating to Missouri.—Ed.
