rt, and it was also difficult to transplant the fort. So he summoned the
settlers and proposed a plan to which they agreed. The hours when they
were not working in the fields or building new cabins they spent in
digging, until a tunnel was made from the stockade to the spring. In
succeeding attacks, the General had his granaries and storehouses well
supplied with food and ammunition, and it was an easy matter to send a boy
with a bucket through the tunnel to the spring for water. This precaution
on the part of the General prevented exhaustion during the next attack on
Logan's Fort. The Indians, unable to understand how the settlers in the
fort could do so long without water, supposed them to be miraculously
defended by the Great Spirit, and never afterward could Girty lead his
band to attack Logan's Fort.

The settlers at Bryan's Station, a few miles from Lexington, did not take
a similar precaution. During one of the Indian attacks on them the supply
of water in the fort became exhausted, and surrender seemed unavoidable.
The women of the fort volunteered to go for water, and taking buckets
marched down to the spring. The Indians were surprised, superstitious, and
panic-stricken, and refused to fire on them. The women filled their
buckets and returned in safety to the stockade.

Notwithstanding the bounteous provision made by Nature to supply the needs
of the settler in the way of fruits, wild meats, and skins for clothing,
life in the settlements was plain in the extreme. Furniture and household
utensils were scant and crude, for the most part being of home
construction. Salt was one of the greatest needs of the settlers. At
first, they made it from the water of the numerous salt licks, each family
making its supply by boiling the water in a kettle until the moisture had
evaporated, leaving the salt encrusted in the kettle. These kettles were
crude, and invariably small. Hence it was more difficult to supply a
family with salt than with sugar, which was easily made by boiling down
the sap from the maple trees. After awhile, the Virginia authorities sent
out a number of large kettles and two expert salt makers, who reported to
Captain Boone for service. Boone, with his two experts and thirty other
men, left Boonesborough for the Lower Blue Lick Spring, fifty or more
miles toward the north. Here they made a camp and set to work to
manufacture a stock of salt sufficient to supply the needs of all the
settlements for a pe