Letter from Fort Harmar, November 26, 1788.

By what is evidently a clerical error the time is put down as one month instead of one year.] went down the Ohio.

For many years this great river was the main artery through which the fresh blood of the pioneers was pumped into the west.
There are no means of procuring similar figures for the number of immigrants who went over the Wilderness Road; but probably there were not half as many as went down the Ohio.

Perhaps from ten to twenty thousand people a year came into Kentucky during the period immediately succeeding the close of the Revolution; but the net gain to the population was much less, because there was always a smaller, but almost equally steady, counter-flow of men who, having failed as pioneers, were struggling wearily back toward their deserted eastern homes.
Kentucky's Growth.
The inrush being so great Kentucky grew apace.

In 1785 the population was estimated at from twenty [Footnote: "Journey in the West in 1785," by Lewis Brantz.] to thirty thousand; and the leading towns, Louisville, Lexington, Harrodsburg, Booneboro, St.Asaph's, were thriving little hamlets, with stores and horse grist-mills, and no longer mere clusters of stockaded cabins.