tration and its power. To the end that the pioneers might be entirely destroyed or driven from the land which the Indian claimed as his own, and justly so claimed, let it be said, he had endeavored to form a combination of all the Indian tribes, north and south, his ultimate aim being a concentrated attack upon the whites wherever they might be found. He missed the battle at Tippecanoe by reason of his mission to the outlying tribes, but arrived in time to experience the mortification of the defeat which came to his brother The Prophet. General Harrison, shrewd old Indian fighter that he was, had forced the fighting as soon as he came within touch of the Indians and met them at the very doors of their wigwams, scattering them to the four winds and administering the most serious defeat they had ever known. General Harrison's regular troops were reinforced in this campaign and decisive battle by Kentucky volunteers, who, then, as always, did honor to themselves and the state for which they fought.

Among the Kentuckians who died upon this field of honor was Colonel Joseph Hamilton Daveiss and Colonel Abraham Owen, each of whom fell with face to the front. Daveiss had

already won civic honors in the attempt to indict Aaron Burr for alleged complicity in the Spanish Conspiracy and Owen was a typical pioneer who had many times met and fought the savage foes who made life a burden to the early settlers of Kentucky. He had been a member of the convention which formed the second constitution of Kentucky, and was a member of the Kentucky senate. He fell at the side of General Harrison, for whom he was an aide-de-camp. To many Kentuckians it will be interesting to know that one of his sons, Colonel Clark Owen, led a Texas regiment on the Confederate side in the War Between the States, and fell at the head of his regiment on the deadly field of Shiloh in 1862.

Colonel Joseph Hamilton Daveiss was one of the first of the great lawyers of Kentucky, a brother-in-law of Chief Justice Marshall of the supreme court of the United States, whose sister he married. He was a great orator and those who had heard him said that he was the most impressive of speakers, nor did they except Henry Clay. He died for his country, a death he would perhaps have chosen above all others, as would any true man who has ever worn the uniform of a soldier.

The closing days of the year 1811 were marked by the most severe seismic disturbance ever known, up to that time, in Kentucky and its neighboring states, Tennessee and Missouri, producing results which have remained to this day.

Early in the morning of December 16, 1811, an earthquake of startling magnitude, awoke the inhabitants of certain portions of the states named, so violent were the movements of the earth and loud the rumbling sounds accompanying those movements. In the excitement incident to these disturbances, these rumbling sounds were compared to those produced by the simultaneous firing of a thousand pieces of artillery, the comparison having been made, it is evident by some one who had never witnessed a battle nor heard the roar of a battery of artillery in action, to say nothing of a thousand pieces of artillery. But it was a momentous earthquake; of that there can be no doubt.

The current of the Mississippi river, by the upheaval of the earth, was for a time turned up stream; a fact of which there is no doubt, as there were many reliable witnesses. The shock continued with more or less violence until December 21st. The strangest result of this seismic upheaval was the formation in West Tennessee, not far from the Kentucky line, of a lake seventy miles long and from three to twenty miles wide, the depth of which varies from shallow water to one hundred feet,

a greater depth than the Mississippi river, whence came its waters, is known to show along its entire great length. This lake was christened Reel Foot, by which name it has ever since been known. For many years it has been a favored spot with sportsmen of rod and gun, the great number of fish in its waters being seemingly equalled at certain seasons, by the wild geese and ducks which seek food and rest within and upon its water during their migratory periods. In 1908, Reel Foot Lake was the scene of the cowardly murder of one man, and the attempted murder of another, by men who resented what they claimed wast an attempt to infringe upon their alleged vested right to hunt and fish upon the waters of the lake. The state of Tennessee made a vigorous prosecution of the participants in this outrage, and appropriate punishment was meted out to a number of them.

In the legislative session of 1811-12 a grant of land was made in aid of the location and erection of salt works in the counties of Wayne and Pulaski. This was the inception of state aid to public works which led to the granting of future sums to improve the navigation of certain streams within the state-notably the Kentucky, Green, Barren and Cumberland rivers, and the construction of turnpikes in certain counties. certain counties. Of this latter concession what are known as the Blue Grass counties were the principal beneficiaries, the result being apparent to this day, in a system of roads,

unequalled anywhere else in the United States and only equalled or surpassed by the excellent roadways of England and France, in the former of which countries those unparalleled road builders, the Roman armies of Cæsar, laid the foundations of roads and bridges which exist today in a condition of excellence which would shame the so-called road builders of Kentucky in the counties outside of the Blue Grass section.

At the period of this writing (1911) efforts

of the legislature should cease to furnish matter for jests in the columns of newspapers. It is a time for men; men who have done good work at home; men who would do good work for the state; men who have no political axes to grind; men who would recognize the acceptance of a seat in the general assembly as a duty, sacred to themselves, their families, their districts and their state. When the good day comes that such men are chosen-and it will come when the people demand it at the polls

are being made to perfect a "Good Roads System" in the state, which will result in good only when the people of Kentucky shall have learned to send to the general assembly their best men who have shown their capacity in the management of their personal affairs, and a public spirit that marks them as worthy of recognition by the state and by the people of their respective counties.

In the progress of this work reference has more than once been made to the necessity for the choice of better men as state senators and representatives and even further reference may be made later. It is time that being a member

Kentucky will take the place to which it is entitled in the sisterhood of states. Kentucky will then remodel its archaic system of taxation which now repels foreign capital and drives from its borders the investments of its own citizens, and will offer to the citizens of other states as to those of its own, a helping rather than a repellant hand.

At the legislative session above alluded to, Kentucky assented to a proposed amendment to the Federal constitution depriving of citizenship any who accepted a foreign title of nobility or honor, or who accepted presents or office from any foreign government.

The growing sentiment against dueling was illustrated in the passage of an act under the provisions of which all state and judicial officers were required to make oath that they had not engaged in or participated as seconds in a duel or negotiated a challenge therefor. This

DANIEL BOONE MONUMENT, CHEROKEE PARK, LOUISVILLE

sentiment was afterwards emphasized in the constitution of the state, where it yet remains, and embraces all persons who are required by law to make oath before accepting office that they have in no wise participated in a duel with a citizen of the state, in or out of the state, or carried a challenge for such duel.

Kentuckians have been represented to be an office-seeking and office-holding race, it is perhaps, unnecessary to state that dueling long since went out of fashion in this state. It is the usual custom now, to settle on the spot differences which in the earlier days would have resulted in a call upon what was known as "the code of honor."

It is worthy of mention that this same legislature inaugurated or legalized public lotteries. The firse lottery grant was for the improvement of Kentucky river; the second, in aid of repairs on the public road from Maysville to Washington in Mason county; the third and most remarkable being in aid of the erection on the public square at Frankfort of a church building for the free use of the people of all sects or denominations. If such a church resulted from this lottery, history is silent in regard to it, and the probability is that the promoters thereof profited to a larger extent through its management than did "the people of all sects or denominations" for whose ostensible benefit it was originated. This was the origination of a long series of lotteries for the alleged benefit of this or that public institution which obtained in Kentucky for many years, the last of which only discontinued its operations after a long series of judicial contests originating in the state courts, and ending finally, in a decision by the supreme court of the United States, adverse to the lotteries. Since that date, no publicly conducted lotteries have existed in Kentucky though the miserable "policy" lottery devised for the robbery of the poorer and more ignorant classes, still leads in secret, a precarious existence in the larger cities.

Isaac Shelby, a hero of the War of the Revolution and progenitor of a line of excellent men and women of Kentucky, was in August, 1812, for a second time, elected governor of the state. The secretary of state was Martin D. Hardin, the murder of whose father, Colonel John Hardin, by the Indians to whom he

bore a mission of peace, has been elsewhere referred to in this work.

It was during the succeeding session of the legislature that Daniel Boone made his pathetic plea for restitution referred to at an earlier period in this work. Through ignorance of the law and, perhaps through the wrong-doing of others, his imagined title to valuable lands in Kentucky had proven worthless. He had left the land he had aided in wresting from the savage; going first to Virginia and later to Missouri, ill-luck apparently following closely upon his footsteps. He thought himself the legal possessor of ten thousand acres of land in Missouri, but found this belief to be unfounded so far as a legal title was concerned. He came back to Kentucky, and to the legislature made this plaintive plea: "And now, your memorialist is left, at about the age of eighty, to be a wanderer in the world, having no spot he can call his own whereon to lay his bones."

Poor old pioneer! Kentucky owed him much and the poor payment of that debt was supposed to have been made when the state brought home his remains and those of his faithful old wife, and gave them sepulture in the state cemetery at Frankfort under a modest monumental stone which the vandal hands of curiosity seekers desecrated in search of relics until its original design was almost obliterated. It is to the credit of the good women of the Kentucky Historical Society that the monument has been restored to its original condition, so far as is possible, and a barrier of iron placed between it and future vandal hands that would seek to mar its simple and appropriate symmetry. He has a grave within

Boone lost his lands. Kentucky and one of the counties of the state bears his name. And that is all that can be done for his honor and glory now.