that had hitherto
ventured westward--including Uriah Stone as pilot, Gasper
Mansker, John Rains, Isaac Bledsoe, and a dozen others--assembled
in June, 1769, in the New River region. "Each Man carried two
horses," says an early pioneer in describing one of these
parties, "traps, a large supply of powder and led, and a small
hand vise and bellows, files and screw plate for the purpose of
fixing the guns if any of them should get out of fix." Passing
through Cumberland Gap, they continued their long journey until
they reached Price's Meadow, in the present Wayne County,
Kentucky, where they established their encampment. In the course
of their explorations, during which they gave various names to
prominent natural features, they established their "station camp"
on a creek in Sumner County, Tennessee, whence originated the
name of Station Camp Creek. Isaac Bledsoe and Gasper Mansker,
agreeing to travel from here in opposite directions along a
buffalo trace passing near the camp, each succeeded in
discovering the famous salt-lick which bears his name--namely
Bledsoe's Lick and Mansker's Lick. The flat surrounding the lick,
about one hundred acres in extent, discovered by Bledsoe,
according to his own statement "was principally Covered with
buffelows in every direction--not hundreds but thousands." As he
sat on his horse, he shot down two deer in the lick; but the
buffaloes blindly trod them in the mud. They did not mind him and
his horse except when the wind blew the scent in their nostrils,
when they would break and run in droves. Indians often lurked in
the neighbourhood of these hunters--plundering their camp,
robbing them, and even shooting down one of their number, Robert
Crockett, from ambush. After many trials and vicissitudes, which
included a journey to the Spanish Natchez and the loss of a great
mass of peltries when they were plundered by Piomingo and a war
party of Chickasaws, they finilly reached home in the late spring
of 1770."

The most notable expedition of this period, projected under the
auspices of two bold leaders extraordinarily skilled in
woodcraft, Joseph Drake and Henry Scaggs, was organized in the
early autumn of 1770. This imposing band of stalwart hunters from
the New River and Holston country, some forty in number, garbed
in hunting shirts, leggings, and moccasins, with three
pack-horses to each man, rifles, ammunition, traps, dogs,
blankets, and salt, pushed boldly through Cumberland Gap int