All were in high spirits, and resolute to go to Kentucky, in spite of Indian hostilities.

Some of them joined Floyd, and raised his party to eighteen men, who started down the Ohio in four canoes.[42] They found "a battoe loaded with corn," apparently abandoned, and took about three bushels with them.

Other parties joined them from time to time, as they paddled and drifted down stream; and one or two of their own number, alarmed by further news of Indian hostilities, went back.

Once they met a party of Delawares, by whom they were not molested; and again, two or three of their number encountered a couple of hostile savages; and though no one was hurt, the party were kept on the watch all the time.

They marvelled much at the great trees--one sycamore was thirty-seven feet in circumference,--and on a Sunday, which they kept as a day of rest, they examined with interest the forest-covered embankments of a fort at the mouth of the Scioto, a memorial of the mound-builders who had vanished centuries before.
When they reached the mouth of the Kentucky[43] they found two Delawares and a squaw, to whom they gave corn and salt.