COLONEL FLEMING'S JOURNAL, 1779-1780



Fort which is a dirty place in winter like every other Station,
there is a lick close to the post called by the Indians deep
lick in which there is a spring which serves the people in
common that smells and tastes strong of sulphur there is
likewise a Salt Spring or two but water weak in it. Our
Journey to Bryants 1 on Elkhorn was done in 15 miles crossed
Boone Creek and Howards Creek and passed through several
tracts of fine land. Bryants Station as it is called, formerly
the property of Col. Preston and exchainged by him for
the horse shoe on New River is an exceeding fine tract of
land and a happy situation. There is at present about 5O
families all but four came here this last summer and fall
there is plenty of small cane as we came from Boonesburg
and about this place. The Cane is a long time before it
runs to seed some say 7 years after which it dies and Spring[s]
up from the seed it bears grain larger than Rye. the time
the seed lyes in the earth is uncertain it grows in rich moist
earth, sometimes large spots of a hundred acres will run to
seed at once, sometimes you will meet with stalks that seed
in spots when the other stalks of a younger growth do not,
the roots of cane will continue years in the earth without
being destroyed if in a favourable earth neither too wet nor
to dry.
  The hump or that remarkable rising on the shoulders of
a Buffalo is formed by the Spinal Processes of the nine first
Vertebrae of the back gradually rising in hight from the
ninth to the third. The Second and first being some thing
shorter than the third, and the process of the third rising
sometimes in bulls to the length of Eighten Inches the
ninth to 3 or four inches these spines cut off and dressed the
meat is reconed the sweetest part of the Buffalo. There
was numbers of Paroquitos 2 flying about Boonsburg. We
heard this day that the people moving out to this Country
had lost 500 cattle and as was my horse by the rising of
the waters and that in general they were in the utmost dis-

   I Bryan's Station, about six miles northeast of Lexington.
   2Parrots, in the margin of the manuscript.
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