It derived its importance from the river traffic on the Mississippi.

All the boatmen stopped there, and sometimes as many as one hundred and fifty craft were moored to the bank at the same time.
The men who did this laborious river work were rude, powerful, and lawless, and when they halted for a rest their idea of enjoyment was the coarsest and most savage dissipation.

At Natchez there speedily gathered every species of purveyor to their vicious pleasures, and the part of the town known as "Natchez under the Hill" became a by-word for crime and debauchery.

[Footnote: Henry Ker, "Travels," p.

41.] Growth of Kentucky.
Kentucky had grown so in population, possessing over two hundred thousand inhabitants, that she had begun to resemble an Eastern State.
When, in 1796, Benjamin Logan, the representative of the old woodchoppers and Indian fighters, ran for governor and was beaten, it was evident that Kentucky had passed out of the mere pioneer days.