the Youghiogheny, at a point about thirty miles above Pittsburg. In a second party which left Hartford, Conn., early in January, 1788, came the surveyors and the remainder of the pioneers.

The winter was severe and the journey was not made without genuine hardship. The second party found its path particularly hard. Snow lay deep and untracked upon the Alleghanies, and the baggage had to be painfully drawn upon sleds.

In such a season the mechanics could make but slow advance with the boat. At the approach of spring the work was pushed more rapidly, and on the second of April the "Adventure Galley," as they then called it, was ready to invade the West. The boat was forty-five feet long, and twelve feet wide, with the curved bow of a galley, and her heavy planks surmounted by a deck roof-a heavy, cumbersome craft, but snug enough to float in down-stream. She was afterwards re-christened the Mayflower, with a propriety which will not be questioned, for New England was now, in her turn, going westward to plant the first colony in a vast wilderness.

A flat boat and three canoes accompanied the Mayflower on her journey down the Alleghany and past Pittsburg into the Ohio, whose current carried them rapidly towards the spot which had been chosen for settlement. In selecting the

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Muskingum the settlers had been guided by a singular unanimity of opinion. "By all means make the location on the Muskingum," said Thomas Hutchins, the Geographer of the United States. Although Hutchins urged a site above the mouth of Licking Creek, at the forks, the more southern location was at that time deemed a better choice. It was in the centre of a district unfrequented by the Indians, was close to a fortification, and rested upon the great avenue of the Ohio itself.

Here, as we have seen, the Mayflower landed her passengers. The new-comers had shaken the snow from their coats at the outset of their journey. Now the buffalo clover brushed the tops of their boots. It was a new world. The genial face of the country filled the rugged company with a deep pleasure. There was a human welcome from the people of the fort, and from a party of Delaware Indians encamped at the mouth of the river. The Delawares, to the number of about seventy, and headed by Captain Pipes, an influential chief, had come to trade with the soldiers of the garrison. With their accustomed diplomacy the Indians offered a most affable greeting to the white men.

Thus the pioneers began their work. Those not engaged in surveying swung the axe or drew the saw, and within a week four acres had been cleared. One of the traditions associated with the landing

of these new pilgrims describes the rivalry between two men who, upon jumping ashore, each started to cut down a tree. Of the two one sank his axe into a buckeye, the softest of all trees native to the region, and readily defeated the other who had chosen a tree of another species. To this episode has been ingeniously traced the title "Buckeye State." Another theory traces the title to the name "Big Buckeye," said to have been given by the Indians to Colonel Ebenezer Sproat, as a tribute to his commanding figure. But the buckeye is not particularly tall or symmetrical. The most natural inference seems to be that the designation has arisen from the abundant growth of the buckeye in the Ohio region.* The settlers soon found the soft wood of the buckeye very useful for making troughs in which to catch the sap of the maple.

To clear and plant the ground occupied the energies of General Putnam's party for many weeks. At the approach of June one hundred and fifty acres had been planted with corn. Not a man had been sick. The code of laws, nailed to a

* Dr. Daniel Drake in an after-dinner speech at Cincinnati, said of the buckeye: "The tree which you have toasted, Mr. President, has the distinction of being one of a family of plants but a few species of which exist on the earth. They constitute the genus Aesulus of the botanist, which belongs to the class Heptandria. Now the latter, a Greek phrase, signifies seven men; and there happens to be exactly seven species of the genus- thus they con stitute the seven wise men of the woods; in proof of which, I may mention, that there is not another family on the whole earth that possesses these talismanic attributes of wisdom. But this is not all. Of the seven species, our emblem-tree was discovered last it is the youngest of the family, the seventh son! and who does not know the manifold virtues of a seventh son!"