I DO NOT REMEMBER our arrival at my grandfather's farm sometime before daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty
miles with heavy work-horses.
I sold my farm on the Yadkin, and what goods we could not carry with us; and on the twenty-fifth day of September, 1773, bade a farewel to our friends, and proceeded on our journey to Kentucke, in company with five families more, and forty men that joined us in Powel's Valley, which is one hundred and fifty
miles from the now settled parts of Kentucke.
This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a
mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story; and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.
I took three-quarters of a
mile of rope and fastened one end of it around the waist of a guide, and told him to go find the road, while the caravan waited.
Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five
mile wide and full of rushes -- and ducks too, you might say, in the season.
His farm, very nearly ten square
miles in area, lay back of the house in a great oval of field and woodland, with several dozen cottages in the clearings.
There, a
mile and a half from the frigate, a long blackish body emerged a yard above the waves.
Scarce had they rowed a
mile, when a wave broke over their boat and upset it.
The lake is a
mile wide, here, and maintains about that width from this point to its northern extremity--which is distant sixteen
miles: from here to its southern extremity--say fifteen
miles--it is not over half a
mile wide in any place, I should think.
Behind us the glowing desert rolls away to the horizon, and before us lie
mile upon
mile of smooth hard snow almost level, but swelling gently upwards, out of the centre of which the nipple of the mountain, that appears to be some
miles in circumference, rises about four thousand feet into the sky.
I shall not go into the details of its construction--it lies out there in the desert now--about two
miles from here.
And there would be the inevitable bad jams, short ones, it was true, but so bad that a
mile an hour would require terrific effort.
