XLVI. 1770. Oct. with each year were getting further and further CHAP. down the river. When Washington in 1770, having established for the soldiers and officers who had terved with him in the French war, their right to yo hundred thousand acres in the western valley, went to select suitable tracts, he was obliged to descend to the Great Kenawha. As he floated in a canoe down the Ohio, whose banks he found enlivened by innumerable turkeys and other wild fowl, with many deer browsing on the shore or stepping down to the water's edge to drink, no good land escaped his eye. Where the soil and growth of timber were most inviting, he would walk through the woods, and set his mark on a maple, or elm, a hoop-wood, or ash, as the corner of a soldier's survey;1 for he watched over the interests of his old associates in arms as sacredly as if he had been their trustee, and never ceased his care for them, till by his exertions, and "by these alone," he had secured to each one of them, or if they were dead, to their heirs, the full proportion of the bounty that had been promised. His journey to the wilderness was not without its pleasures; he amused himself with the sports of the forest, or observing new kinds of water-fowl, or taking the girth of the largest trees, one of which at a yard from the ground measured within two inches of five and forty feet. His fame had gone before him; the Red Men received him in Council with public honors. Nor did he turn homewards without inquiring of Nicholson, an Indian interpreter, and of Conolly, an intelligent forester, the character of the country further 2 1 1 Washington's Diary, Writings, ii. 528. 2 Life of Washington by Jared Sparks, i. 119, 120. 299 XLVI. 1770. Nov. CHAP. West. From these eye-witnesses he received glowing accounts of the climate, soil, good streams and plentiful that distinguished the valley of the Cumbergame land. There he was persuaded a new and most desirable Government might be established.1 1 2 At that time Daniel Boon was still exploring the land of promise. Of forty adventurers who from the Clinch River plunged into the West under the lead of James Knox, and became renowned as "the Long Hunters," some found their way down the Cumberland to the limestone Bluff, where Nashville stands, and where the luxuriant, gently undulating fields, covered with groves of beech and walnut, were in the undisputed possession of countless buffaloes, whose bellowings resounded from hill and forest. Sometimes trappers and restless emigrants, boldest of their class, took the risk of crossing the country from Carolina to the Mississippi; but of those who perished by the way, no tradition preserves the names. Others, following the natural highways of the West, descended from Pittsburg, and from Red Stone Creek to Fort Natchez. The pilot, who conducted the party of which Samuel Wells and John MacIntire were the Chiefs, was so attracted by the lands round the Fort, that he promised to remove there in the spring with his wife and family, and believed a hundred families from North Carolina would follow. 5 The zeal of hunters and emigrants outran the concessions extorted from the Board of Trade. This 'Dr. Conolly in Washington, ii. 105. Haywood's Civil and Politi 533. Boon's Autobiography. ler's Kentucky, 18, 19. 4 Ramsey's Annals of Tennessee, cal History of Tennessee, 77. "Letter dated Fort Natchez, 19 July, 1770. Compare Hillsborough to Chester, 8 Oct. 1770; Gage to Hillsborough, 24 April, 1770. : to XLVI. 1770. Nov. year James Robertson, from the home of the Regula- CHAP. He was followed to the West, by men from the 1 John Hayward's Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee, 39, 40. 2 Governor Martin to the Secretary of State, Hillsborough, 30 August, 1772. . Petition of Orange County to Chief Justice Howard, and to the XLVI. 1770. Nov. 8 CHAP. of which more than two thirds' had been irretrieva bly embezzled. In the northern part of the Colony, where the ownership of the soil had been reserved to one of the old proprietaries, there was no land-office; * so that the people who were attracted by the surpassing excellence of the land could not obtain freeholds. Every art was employed to increase the expenses of suits at law; and as some of the people in their wretchedness wreaked their vengeance in acts of folly and madness, they were artfully misrepresented as enemies to the Constitution; and the oppressor treacherously acquired the protection which was due to the oppressed. In March, 1770, one of the associate justices reported that they could not enforce the payment of taxes. At the Court in September the Regulators appeared in numbers. "We are come down," they said, "with the design to have justice done;" they would have business proceed, but with no attorney except the King's; and finding that it had been resolved not to try their causes, some of them pursued Fanning and another lawyer, beat them with cowskin whips, and laid waste Fanning's house.5 The Assembly which convened in December, at Dec. Newbern, was chosen under a state of alarm and vague apprehension. Tryon had secured Fanning a seat, by chartering the town of Hillsborough as a borough, but the county of Orange, selected Herman Husbands as its Representative, with great unanimity. The soil." 'Postscript to Martin to Hillsbo- 1770, "The super-excellence of the rough, 30 Jan. 1772. Judge Henderson to Tryon, 29 Sept. 1770. 2 Tryon to Hillsborough, 12 April, 1770. Martin to Hillsborough, 10 Nov. Deposition of Ralph McNair, of 9th October, 1770. rustic patriot possessed a good reputation and a con- CHAP. XLVI. siderable estate, and was charged with no illegal act 1770. whatever; yet he was voted a disturber of the public Dec. peace; on the twentieth of December was expelled the House;1 and against the opinion of the Council, and notwithstanding the want of evidence, that he had been even an accessory to the riots at Hillsborough, Tryon seized him under a warrant concerted with the Chief Justice, and kept him in prison without bail.* 6 The Presbyterian party was the strongest in the House; to conciliate its power, a law was passed for endowing Queen's College in the town of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County; a deceitful act of tolerance, which was sure to be annulled by the King in Council. But the great object of Tryon was the riot Act, by which it was declared a felony for more than ten men to remain assembled after being required to disperse. For a riot committed before or after the publication of the Act, persons might be tried in any Superior Court, no matter how distant from their homes, and if within sixty days they did not make their appearance, whether with or without notice, they were to be proclaimed outlaws, and to forfeit their lives with all their property. Such was the san 'Gov. Tryon to Sec. Hillsborough, 31 Jan. 1771. 2"No testimony being present to prove him an accessory to the riots at Hillsborough." Tryon to the Sec. 31 Jan. 1771. 3 Tryon to Hillsborough, 31 Jan. 1771. Letter from Newbern, N. C. 5 Oct. 1770. Letter from a Gentleman in N. C. to his friend in New Jersey respecting the Regulators in North Carolina; in Pennsylvania Journal of 3 Oct. 1771, and in Boston Gazette, of 21 Oct. Judge Martin, ii. 269. "Hus- Tryon to Hillsborough, with See Acts of the Session. Ca- |