ith tall straight trunk and
even foliage that shaded a space of one hundred feet. Instantly he chose
this "divine elm" as the council chamber of Transylvania. Under its
leafage he read the constitution of the new colony. It would be too
great a stretch of fancy to call it a democratic document, for it was
not that, except in deft phrases. Power was certainly declared to be
vested in the people; but the substance of power remained in the hands
of the Proprietors.

Terms for land grants were generous enough in the beginning, although
Henderson made the fatal mistake of demanding quitrents--one of the
causes of dissatisfaction which had led to the Regulators' rising
in North Carolina. In September he augmented this error by more
than doubling the price of land, adding a fee of eight shillings for
surveying, and reserving to the Proprietors one-half of all gold,
silver, lead, and sulphur found on the land. No land near sulphur
springs or showing evidences of metals was to be granted to settlers.
Moreover, at the Company's store the prices charged for lead were said
to be too high--lead being necessary for hunting, and hunting being the
only means of procuring food--while the wages of labor, as fixed by the
Company, were too low. These terms bore too heavily on poor men who were
risking their lives in the colony.

Hence newcomers passed by Boonesborough, as the Transylvania settlement
was presently called, and went elsewhere. They settled on Henderson's
land but refused his terms. They joined in their sympathies with James
Harrod, who, having established Harrodsburg in the previous year at the
invitation of Virginia, was not in the humor to acknowledge Henderson's
claim or to pay him tribute. All were willing to combine with the
Transylvania Company for defense, and to enforce law they would unite
in bonds of brotherhood in Kentucky, even as they had been one with each
other on the earlier frontier now left behind them. But they would call
no man master; they had done with feudalism. That Henderson should not
have foreseen this, especially after the upheaval in North Carolina,
proves him, in spite of all his brilliant gifts, to have been a man out
of touch with the spirit of the time.

The war of the Revolution broke forth and the Indians descended upon the
Kentucky stations. Defense was the one problem in all minds, and defense
required powder and lead in plenty. The Transylvania Company was not
able to provide the means