A "charming field of encounter" he
called the place in his youthful exuberance before the battle in 1753.
"Much Hay may be cut here When the ground is laid down in Grass; and the
upland, East of the Meadow is good for grain," he wrote in his
unsentimental diary, September 12, 1784. For over the mountains he went
again on what was thought but a trip of personal business. But on the
third day of the journey, September 3d, he writes, incidentally, as
explaining his desire to talk with certain men: "one object of my journey
being to obtain information of the nearest and best communication between
the Eastern and Western Waters." And as he advances this becomes the
possessing object.
Here are a few extracts from that diary still preserved in his own hand
which give the intimation of a prescience that should in itself hold for
him a grateful place in the memory of the west and of a concern about
little things that should bring him a bit nearer to our human selves:
_September 6_. "Remained at Bath all day and was showed the Model of a
Boat constructed by the ingenious Mr.
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