While the snow lay deep outside and
good-smelling logs crackled on the hearth, they planned an
expedition into Kentucky through the Gap where Virginia,
Tennessee, and Kentucky touch one another, which Findlay felt
confident he could find. Findlay had learned of this route from
cross-mountain traders in 1753, when he had descended the Ohio to
the site of Louisville, whence he had gone with some Shawanoes as
a prisoner to their town of Es-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki or Blue Licks.*
* Hanna, "The Wilderness Trail," vol. II, pp. 215-16.
On the first day of May, 1769, Boone and Findlay, accompanied by
John Stewart and three other venturesome spirits, Joseph Holden,
James Mooney, and William Cooley, took horse for the fabled land.
Passing through the Cumberland Gap, they built their first camp
in Kentucky on the Red Lick fork of Station Camp Creek.
This camp was their base of operations. From it, usually in
couples, we infer, the explorers branched out to hunt and to take
their observations of the country. Here also they prepared the
deer and buffalo meat for the winter, dried or smoked the geese
they shot in superabundance, made the tallow and oil needed to
keep their weapons in trim, their leather soft, and their kits
waterproof. Their first ill luck befell them in December when
Boone and Stewart were captured by a band of Shawanoes who were
returning from their autumn hunt on Green River.
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