And so we came to Kaintuckee.
CHAPTER X
HARRODSTOWN
The old forts like Harrodstown and Boonesboro and Logan's at St. Asaph's
have long since passed away. It is many, many years since I lived
through that summer of siege in Harrodstown, the horrors of it are faded
and dim, the discomforts lost to a boy thrilled with a new experience. I
have read in my old age the books of travellers in Kentucky, English and
French, who wrote much of squalor and strife and sin and little of those
qualities that go to the conquest of an empire and the making of a
people. Perchance my own pages may be colored by gratitude and love for
the pioneers amongst whom I found myself, and thankfulness to God that we
had reached them alive.
I know not how many had been cooped up in the little fort since the early
spring, awaiting the chance to go back to their weed-choked clearings.
The fort at Harrodstown was like an hundred others I have since seen, but
sufficiently surprising to me then. Imagine a great parallelogram made
of log cabins set end to end, their common outside wall being the wall of
the fort, and loopholed. At the four corners of the parallelogram the
cabins jutted out, with ports in the angle in order to give a flanking
fire in case the savages reached the palisade. And then there were huge
log gates with watch-towers on either sides where sentries sat day and
night scanning the forest line.
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