comparatively idle society; the claimants to military bounty lands which had been promised from the British crown for services against the French, furnished a new and bold band of western explorers. Their land warrants, issued under the authority of Lord Dunmore, were surveyed on the Kenhawa and the Ohio, as early as 1773; though most positively against the very letter of the royal proclamation of 1763.* They were surveyed on the site of the present cities of Louisville and Frankfort, in Kentucky, and through the adjacent country. Even General Washington visited the Kenhawa, in 1770, for the purpose of locating western land claims. His journalt shows the rapidity of settlements down the Ohio river, as low as the Kenhawa. Amongst others, Thomas Bullitt, (uncle to the late Alexander Bullitt, who became the first Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky,) and Hancock Taylor, engaged in this adventurous surveying. These gentlemen were overtaken on the Ohio river, on the 28th of May, 1773, by the McAfees. This party, consisting of James, George and Robert McAfee, James McCoun, Jr., and Samuel Adams, left Sinking Creek, in Bottetourt county, Virginia, and descended New River to the Ohio in canoes. Captain Bullitt was elected captain of the company, which continued together until they reached the mouth of the Kentucky river. At this point, Capt. Bullitt proceeded on to the Falls of Ohio; and the McAfees, with Taylor, ascended the Kentucky, or Levisa, (possibly a corruption of Louisa, which name had been attached to the Kentucky.) The adventures of these hardy adventurers well deserve to be enlarged upon. On the descent of the Ohio river, Bullitt undertook to visit the Indian town of old Chilicothe, on the Scioto. He proceeded through the woods, and arrived undiscovered by the Indians, until he was waving a white flag, as a token of peace. He was soon asked what news, and if came from the Long Knife, (the Indian appellation of the Whites,) as a peace messenger, why he did'nt send a runner? "Would you," said he, "if you were very hungry, and had killed a deer, send your squaw to town to tell the news, and wait her return, before you eat ?" This simple address to their own feelings, soon put the Indians in good humor; and at his desire a council was called to hear his talk the next day. Captain Bullitt then made strong assurances of friendship, on the part of the whites; acknowledged that these "Shawanees and Delawares, our nearest neighbors" "did not get any of the money, or blankets given for the land which I and my people are going to settle. but it is agreed by the great men, who own the land, that they will make a present to both the Delewares and the Shawanees, the next year; and the year following that shall be as good." On the ensuing day, agreeably to the very deliberate manner of the Indians, in council, Capt. Bullitt was informed that "he seemed kind and friendly, and that it pleased them well. That as to settling the country on the other side of the Ohio with your people, we are particularly pleased that they are not to disturb • Henning, VII, 687. † Spark's Wash., II, 516. Butler's Kentucky, 2d Edit., p. 21. us in our hunting. For we must hunt to kill meat for our women' and children; and to get something to buy our powder and lead with; and to get us blankets and clothing." In these talks, there seems a strange want of the usual sagacity of the Indians as to the consequences of white men settling on their hunting grounds, so contrary to their melancholy experience for a century and a half previous. Yet the narrative is unimpeachable.* However this may be, the parties separated in perfect harmony; and Capt. Bullitt proceeded to the Falls of the Ohio. Here he pitched his camp above the mouth at Bear Grass creek, retiring of a night, to a shoal, above Corn Island, opposite the present city of Louisville.† Another surveyor, by the name of James Douglas, followed Capt. Bullitt during the same year; and on his way to the Falls of Ohio, landed near the celebrated collection of mammoth bones which still goes by the emphatic name indicative of its contents-the Big Bone Lick, now situated in the county of Boone. This is the same collection noticed by Col. Croghan, in his descent of the Ohio, in 1765.‡ The latter gentleman speaks of the access to the Lick being by a "large road which the buffaloes have made spacious enough for two wagons to go abreast." Here Douglas remained forming his tentpoles of the ribs of the enormous animals which formerly frequented this remarkable spot; and on these ribs, blankets were stretched to form shelter from the sun and the rain. Many teeth were from eight to nine, and some ten feet in length; one in particular, was fastened in a perpendicular direction, in the clay and mud with the end six feet above the surface of the ground; an effort was made by six men, in vain, to extract it from its mortice or bed. The Lick extended to about ten acres of land, bare of timber, grass or any kind of herbage. It was much trodden, eaten for the saline particles, and depressed below the original surface; with here and there a knob remaining, like the pillars of earth left by excavators, to show the former elevation of the surface. Thus a period seems to be indicated, however, indefinitely, when this resort of numerous animals had not taken place. Through the midst of the Lick ran a creek, and on each side of it, a never failing stream of salt water, whose fountains were in the open field. To this Lick converged froin all parts of the neighboring country, roads made by the wild animals, which resorted thither for the salt contained in the earth and the water of the Lick. When the McAfees visited this Lick, in 1773, with Captain Bullitt, several Delawares were present; one of these being questionedby James McAfee about the origin and nature of those extraordinary bones, replied, that they were then, just as they had been, when he first saw them, in his childhood. Yet this Indian appeared to be at least seventy years of age. Collections of similar bones of animals, which have ceased to tenant the earth, are now familiar not only in the United States, but in other parts of the world; but none exceed, McAfee's papers. It was this gentleman who, according to the testimony of Jacob Sodowsky, a respectable farmer, late of Jessamine county, Ky., first laid out the town of Louisville, in August, 1773; and likewise surveyed Bullitt's Lick, in the adjoining county, of the same name. See Appendix. it is believed, the one in question of the bones of the mammoth or mastodon. In addition to these encroachments of the whites, on the hunting grounds of the Indians, the honesty of history requires the confession of repeated outrages upon the rights of the native tribes, which the popular hatred would not suffer the government to punish. These enormities have sunk into deserved oblivion, and are now only adverted to, that the justice of history may be preserved. Many of the inhabitants now retired into the interior of the colonies, Some Thoughts on Self Intellectual Culture. BY A MEMBER OF THE KEOKUK (IOWA) Bar. The mind's powers and faculties are really and truly wonderful, and they belong to us for exalted purposes: for education, for expansion, for raising up and purifying our moral nature, for developing and energizing our intellectual nature, for becoming great and good ourselves, for rendering others great and good, for the exercise of benevolence and the increase and spread of knowledge, for promoting the beneficial interests of society, for usefulness here, and happiness hereafter. The design is intellectual progression, social elevation, and moral and civil freedom. And he who neglects the educating his mind, he, who persists deliberately in grovelling in the depths of ignorance, he who overlooks the numberless opportunities which the age and country permit for mental instruction and advancement, is guilty of a violation of positive duty, forgets his own most precious interests, and brings a voluntary degradation upon himself, and those connected with him in the various relations of life. And we may add that it is through these faculties of the mind, and their close connection with man's highest happiness, that we hope to lay wider and stronger the foundations and elements of all practical science and useful acquirement among the great masses of the people, to establish and build up and cement the mighty fabric of education, and to mould it in the forms of beauty and excellence, until it shall embrace within its portals every mind to be improved, and protect beneath its canopy every circle of humanity; and thus pour floods of enlightened thought and general intelligence and individual power and civil freedom over the length and breadth of our favored land, Having sufficiently established for our present purpose, the necessity of intellectual culture, and its intimate connexion with our constitution and happiness, the inquiry naturally suggests itself: How is this culture best to be promoted? In a young and growing country, like our own, blessed with a fertile soil and salubrious clime, embracing a population deversified in its character, robust in its constitution, adventurous in its enterprize, conflicting in its habitudes of thoughts, and without a fixed literature, and posssessing institutions as yet in a state of infancy and probation, their organizations immatured, their capacities undeveloped, and the adequacy of their means to satisfy the growing wants of our people but imperfectly established-this question has a more than ordinary application and significance. The question is not, how we shall construct literary and scientific institutions on broad foundation and of solid structure, hereafter to become illustrious on the matriculation and graduation of rich and ripe scholars-not how we shall enlarge the boundaries, and elaborate the symmetry and proportions of knowledge-not how the exclusive minister at the altar of learning may be elevated and refined, and rendered still more prominent-not how the distinctions between the learned and unlearned shall be preserved ;—but the inquiry is, how the public schools may be endowed reaching every class of our fellow citizens, and diffusing their influences, like the genial dews of heaven, upon all; how means shall be multiplied to meet the present wants and emergencies of an active, adventurous and growing society; where and how stimulants may be procured to excite the public mind to active and renewed and vigorous effort in the cause of public instruction; in what manner we shall seize upon the mental faculties of our youth, and throw them into direct collision with the elements and higher departments of learning, and compel them to rest upon their own native energies in the great conflict of existence; and which are the most efficient and available instruments in our power to accomplish the great purpose of disseminating intelligence, of penetrating the fastnesses of ignorance, of throwing open to every man, woman and child the whole empire of knowledge, of raising up and educating the broad, deep accumulated mass of uninstructed mind so affluent in capabilities that exists around us, and of pouring abroad over the whole bosom of society the lights of learning and science and morality. This constitutes our appropriate field of investigation; and I enter upon it with a profound conviction of its magnitude and importance. I wish to impress the conviction upon the mind and heart of my readers with a force and clearness correspondent with my own, of the indispensable and paramount necessity of educating the minds of all our youth in the rudiments and general outlines of knowledge, if we really and sincerily wish to promote their true happiness, and establish their prosperity and preserve in their vigor and integrity the civil, religious and social institutions of our beloved country. In the discussion of this interesting subject-covering as it does an extensive field of thought-my observations must necessarily be general, and confined to the presentation of a sweeping and comprehensive outline of the subject. I shall, in the first place, allude to some of the means of mental improvement, substantially within the reach of all; secondly, present some views on self culture and the more important studies to be selected; and thirdly, endeavor to interest the young reader in the pursuits of learning, by exhibiting the encouragements that animate, and the rewards and compensations that most assuredly follow all intellectual effort of whatever mould, when judiciously directed and diligently pursued. First. Of the means of self-culture. The system of common schools so generally adopted in our country, presents the most prominent element in the history of public instruction. It is so interwoven with our civil polity and social prosperity, as to have become a conservative portion in our political fabric, indispensable to its solidity, its permanency and its beauty. I have neither time nor disposition, to present even an outline of the history of our public schools, nor is it necessary. The materials are too diversified, and reach back over too broad a period of time, for my present purpose, nor would the result be sufficiently instructive to compensate for the labor. Their general usefulness is, I believe, universally acknowledged. On this ground all parties meet. The enviable condition of our country triumphantly vindicates their utility. The genius of our political constitutions, and the spirit of our people, are so consonant with enlightened mind, and so intimately allied with the progress of letters and sound education, as to render them mutually indispensable to the perfection of man's condition. Indeed, public instruction, in connection with moral development, constitute the solid pillars on which our national independence and prosperity repose with perfect security. The desire of the patriot and statesman is not to destroy or impair our admirable system of common schools; but to perfect its organization, introduce new improvements, and extend its beneficial influences until every member of this Republic shall be elevated through its power. In this point of view the subject is one of pervading importance to us. How we shall improve it? How we shall through this medium extend knowledge to all? How we shall elevate the character and attainments of the scholarship sought after here? How respectable and enlightened individuals may be induced to give more efficient aid and patronage to public schools? How far, and in what manner, government may judiciously interpose? And how we may permanently engraft upon the mind of this rapidly populating country the ground work and elements of a sound, useful and practical information? Are questions of vital interest to our well-being and permanent prosperity. They ought to be carefully and patiently investigated. The systems of other States and nations ought to |