Mill creek on one of those wild forays which were still being made and ascended the Licking river on the opposite side of the Ohio.

Benjamin Stites.

These flying bands who first beheld the beautiful and fertile region were attracted and impressed; but lacked either the courage or the resources to seize it for themselves. It could not, however, long remain thus unappropriated, and in the ni time that man appeared by whose foresight and resolution it was to be r ed for civilization. The name of this man was Benjamin Stites, a trader from New Jersey. Happening to be in the little town of Limestone (Maysville), on the Kentucky side of the Ohio when a party of backwoodsmen passed through it in pursuit of a troop of Indians who had stolen their horses, he joined them in a spirit of adventure. They followed the south bank of the Ohio river down to the mouth of the Little Miami, which (after having reached it by means of hastily constructed rafts) they stealthily ascended. More inerested in the country than in the fugitive culprits, Stites observed it with a trained and unerring judgment. So deeply was he moved by what he saw of its beauty and fertility that upon the termination of the adventure he hastened east and confided his discovery to a person whose name must be forever associated with that marvelous development of civilization which has taken place in the Ohio valley.

John Cleves Symmes.

This person was John Cleves Symmes, a gentleman who had already attained a not inconsiderable fame and fortune as delegate from Delaware to the Continental Congress in 1785-86; judge of the superior court of New Jersey; and afterwards chief justice of the same state. The story of Stites awakened his ambition and aroused his powers. He threw himself into the scheme to get possession of this paradise with an enthusiasm which knew no bounds. His large acquaintance with men of affairs made it possible and easy for him to secure the interest and co-operation of others. Selecting a score or more of the best of them he (and Stites and they) proceeded to organize an association on the same lines as those laid down by the Ohio company.

Symmes, enthusiastic though he was, had also an element of great caution in his make up and before committing himself finally to what seemed destined to grow into a gigantic undertaking, he determined to go and see with his own eyes whether Stites had been deceived or not. He went, and what he saw upon that eventful journey not only reassured him but made it more than evident that the half had not been told. The report which he brought back was of so glowing a nature that it fired his associates to renewed efforts, and they pushed forward their enterprise with indomitable energy and unquenchable zeal. On the 29th of August, 1787, they presented a petition to Congress for a grant on the same terms as the Ohio company and, impatient at the slow movements of that body, Symmes (with a childish confidence, taking it for granted that Congress would do exactly what he asked) gave Stites a covenant for ten thousand acres of the best land in the valley at the price of five shillings per acre, payable in certificates of the public debt, that medium which the government had agreed to receive in payment for the Muskingum purchase!

Three days afterwards, he issued a glowing prospectus in which he offered a choice of any township, section or quarter section in this paradise of two million acres for two thirds of a dollar per acre, up to the first of May following, when the value would suddenly rise to a whole dollar. Evidently the world looked golden to him then. He felt like a king bestowing empires. Square miles of land were smaller than back door gardens. The only reservation for himself was that of an entire township at the confluence of the Big Miami and the Ohio (together with the fractional townships at the sides) on which he proposed to lay the foundations of the metropolis of the region. Upon this town site he offered every alternate lot, free of charge, to any who should improve it by the erection of a house or cabin and occupy it for at least three consecutive years. It sounded like the proclamation of an emperor and filled the western world with "cloud capped towns, and gorgeous palaces and solemn temples." That such a vision could dissolve and like an unsubstantial pageant fade away and leave a pitiful little wreck behind, seemed quite unthinkable. Applications were made in such numbers as to be recorded with difficulty, and pressed with a rivalry so fierce as to result in bitter quarrels. The wheels of the vast commercial scheme revolved at first, with fairy like rapidity and smoothness, for the bearings of all were oiled by hope. It was not long, however, before they each began to creak. Terribly discordant sounds arose and troubles of every kind sprang up.

When, after many and aggravating delays, the treasury board at last took up the request of the judge and his partners, it was speedily discovered that they had acted too soon! That enormous water front upon the Ohio was a gift which would have staggered a Roman emperor or a French king, say nothing about the scrupulous legislators of a new democracy! The careful and economical committees drew new lines about the purchase, and to his distress and confusion the too optimistic judge discovered that they excluded many valuable tracts for which he had already taken (and, no doubt) expended the money. This, of course, produced expensive litigations and bitter animosities of so serious a nature as to darken the whole subsequent life of the honest and conscientious, but unbusiness-like, judge. They followed him down to his grave, in fact, and so imbittered his soul as to make him leave, in his will, an imprecation upon what he regarded as the ingratitude of his countrymen; but what his countrymen believe was, only, an error of his individual judgment.

It was an inauspicious beginning for so promising an undertaking and set it back awhile. But the opportunity was too attractive and too genuine to permit it to be permanently closed up. Compromises were agreed upon and such arrangements made as to permit the enterprise to go forward. In May, 1792, Congress made a final disposition of the matter by granting Symmes the whole Ohio river front (lying between the two Miamis) limited on the east and west by their channels and a straight line drawn from one to the other in such a way as to encompass 248,540 acres of land exclusive of a few reservations for religious, educational and military establishments. It was a terrible shrinkage and a bitter disappointment to the over sanguine promoter. As the actual immigration, set in motion by the judge's personal assurance had actually begun in 1789 and the final adjustment was not reached until 1792, those three years had fur

nished sufficient time for engendering difficulties which decades were required to settle.

As every other movement in nature and in politics by which the site of Cincinnati was prepared for occupation was slow, the retardation of this last one need not cause us any new surprise. But, slowly as it moves, Providence finally attains its every goal, and the preliminary steps which we have been so swiftly tracing have at length been taken. In the first place we studied the processes of natural forces; in the second place the protracted struggles for pre-eminence and possession between the French, the English, the Americans and the Indians; and finally the legal complications in the government plan for the sale of the territory, after its possession had been gained.

It is a complicated and wonderful web of happenings! As was, at the outset prophesied, we have been compelled to "keep in mind a vast extent of territory and co-ordinate events occurring anywhere and everywhere between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi; the Cumberland river and the Great Lakes."

The Actual Settlement.

The time has come at last, however, when our vision narrows down and we are now to undertake the survey of the actual settlement of our town. But it must be remembered that no single event can be detached from all others. The stream of history bears them easily along in a single channel, blending them harmoniously together. But the mind of man cannot thus grasp them all nor can his art present them as a whole. The limitations of his powers of thought compel him to seize and to describe each one consecutively and bind them together then as best he can.

The Three Bands.

We find ourselves obliged to trace, therefore, at this period of our undertaking events which had begun to transpire even before the political organization of the territory was completed. As the zeal of Symmes had led him to sell the land before he had gotten his title, the zeal of the home-seekers led them to enter the promised land while he was in the initial stages of his negotiations. Out of the many columns of this advancing army of immigrants we are concerned with a single one which, however, sub-divides itself into these three distinct, and yet most closely correlated stories of settlements, one at the mouth of the Little Miami; another at that of the Big Miami, and a third close by the mouth of the Mill creek and opposite the Licking. The starting points for expeditions into the wilderness were, naturally enough, such places as Marietta on the northern shores of the Ohio and Limestone, Maysville on the south. This latter community in the state of Kentucky had already become a trading point of no inconsiderable importance. It was the place at which the travellers by water left their boats, when headed for the famous "Blue Grass" region and for Lexington, its infant metropolis. Here were fitted out those little companies which, in ever growing numbers, pushed out in every direction into the terra incognita. This was the point for adventurers of every kind to gather in; discuss their prospects and their plans; get the news; meet their friends; purchase provisions and build their boats.

Symmes, Stites, Denman—1788.

In the summer of 1788 three men might have frequently been seen in earnest conversation along the wharf and in the little town. Evidently they had business one with another of no mean concern. John Cleves Symmes, the purchaser of the vast tract between the Miami was one; Benjamin Stites, who had secured from him the region around the north of the Little Miami, another; while the third was a certain Matthias Denman, who was negotiating for the land on the shore of the Ohio opposite the Licking river. It is the story of their rival efforts to locate the metropolis of the Ohio valley which the progress of our narrative now summons us to tell,--not in minute details, but only in broad and bold outline. In answer to the question, "Are you travelling slowly and observing critically," a young Iowan on a railroad train in Switzerland, replied: "I am only touching the high points and never sleep more than one night, in a single country." Let us, also, touch only the high points! We, too, must sleep no more than a single night and spend no more than a single day in any place through which we pass.

Settlement at Columbia.

It is with the adventures of Benjamin Stites that we begin, who, having completed his preparations before his competitors, set forth on the 16th of November, accompanied by a little group of hardy, enthusiastic and capable companions. On the morning of the 18th, from the decks of their rude barges, they surveyed the location which they believed to be the actual heart of this wilderness world, at the mouth of the Little Miami. With caution they approached the shore and, after having reconnoitered for fear of Indians, disembarked. About three-quarters of a mile below the spot at which the Little Miami discharged its waters into the Ohio they climbed the bank; cleared away the underbrush, and kneeling down upon the virgin soil, commended themselves and the town (which they named Columbia) to the blessing of Almighty God. In this little group of serious and religious persons were several more than ordinary men. Stites himself was one; John S. Gano was another, and not less so Edmund Buxton and Greenbright Bailey. Their principles were firm; their purposes noble and their judgments sound. They were mistaken only in that which no sagacity was able, independently, to determine the strategic spot for a great city. The element which upset their plans was the great river, whose behavior could not possibly have been foreseen. What the circumstances demanded they did promptly, intelligently and successfully, the first thing being the erection of a block house, which they built from trees felled on the spot. Into this safe enclosure they led the women and children and then plunged resolutely into the work of erecting houses. The walls were made of logs and the doors and floors of planks from their flat boats which were dismantled for the purpose. They had, of course, to endure the usual hardships and dangers incident to such life; but there was abundant game in the forest and river, while the woods were full of edible roots which the women gathered, dried, pulverized and turned into a tolerable substitute for bread.

In the spring they began to plow up "Turkey Bottom," a rich alluvial tract which the Indians had already cultivated and from which in the fall they reaped a bountiful crop, securing themselves, in this way, against that greatest of perils, hunger.