The very conditions that enabled so small a number to make a permanent settlement forbade their trying unduly to extend its bounds.
He Goes to Virginia to Raise Troops.
Clark knew he could get from among his fellow-settlers some men peculiarly suited for his purpose, but he also realized that he would have to bring the body of his force from Virginia.

Accordingly he decided to lay the case before Patrick Henry, then Governor of the State of which Kentucky was only a frontier county.
On October 1, 1777, he started from Harrodsburg, [Footnote: In the earlier MSS, it is called sometimes Harrodstown and sometimes Harrodsburg; but from this time on the latter name is in general use.] to go over the Wilderness road.

The brief entries of his diary for this trip are very interesting and sometimes very amusing.

Before starting he made a rather shrewd and thoroughly characteristic speculation in horseflesh, buying a horse for L12, and then "swapping" it with Isaac Shelby and getting L10 to boot.

He evidently knew how to make a good bargain, and had the true backwoods passion for barter.