30th.—We passed the Great Miame River, about thirty miles from the little river of that name, and in the evening arrived at the place where the Elephants' bones are found, where we encamped, intending to take a view of the place next morning. This day we came about seventy miles. The country on both sides level, and rich bottoms well watered.
31st.—Early in the morning we went to the great Lick, where those bones are only found, about four miles from the river, on the south-east side. In our way we passed through a fine timbered clear wood; we came into a large road which the Buffaloes have beaten, spacious enough for two waggons to go abreast, and leading straight into the Lick.
It appears that there are vast quantities of these bones lying five or six feet under ground, which we discovered in the bank, at the edge of the Lick. We found here two tusks above six feet long; we carried one, with some other bones, to our boats, and set off.[1] This day we proceeded down the river about eighty miles, through a country much the same as already described, since we passed the Scioto. In this day's journey we passed the mouth of the River Kentucky, or Holsten's River.[2]
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- ↑ Big Bone Lick, in Boone County, Kentucky, was visited by the French in the early eighteenth century. It was a landmark for early Kentucky hunters, who describe it in terms similar to those used by Croghan. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, scientists took much interest in the remains of the mammoth (or mastodon)—the "elephant's bones" described by Croghan. Thomas Jefferson and several members of the American Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia, attempted to secure a complete skeleton of this extinct giant; and a number of fossils from the lick were also sent to Europe. Dr. Goforth of Cincinnati undertook an exploration to the lick at his own expense (1803), but was later robbed of the result. The store of huge bones is not yet entirely exhausted, specimens being yet occasionally excavated—the present writer having examined some there in 1894.—Ed.
- ↑ It is a curious mistake on Croghan's part to designate the Kentucky as the Holston River. The latter is a branch of the Tennessee, flowing through
