It was customary for arks’ crews to have a “liberty day” at the embryo metropolis, but on this occasion Marion Royce dissuaded his fellows from stopping there longer than was necessary to make sure that there was no trace in the town of Jimmy Claiborne. They tied up for the night to the Kentucky bank, a little below where Covington now stands, and the next day floated down to the mouth of Big Bone Creek.
The Ohio was still rising, the current waxing stronger and more rapid each day. Thus far the ark had tied up only by night, but her young captain had a particular reason for stopping at this point.
During his previous visits to New Orleans Marion had met many odd characters along the levees, among others a certain French doctor and savant, named Buchat, who was vastly interested in the natural history of the New World, and after an odd fashion of his own was incessantly questioning the hunters and boatmen who came down the great river. The latter generally considered him crack-brained; but Marion understood him better, and liked the vivacious old gentleman.
Dr. Buchat had heard of the huge skeletons of mastodons (then called mammoths) which had been found by the settlers in the Ohio Valley, and was very curious concerning the localities where they were discovered. Marion Royce, who had once ascended Big Bone Creek for game, gave the old Frenchman such information as he was able concerning the size of the thighbones, vertebræ and skulls which he had seen in the basin of the Lick.
Marion’s account so fired the enthusiasm of the collector that he offered the young man a thousand francs if he would unearth a skeleton of one of these huge creatures and fetch it down the river on his next trip.
A thousand francs—about two hundred dollars—was a sum not to be despised in those days of small means, especially by a young pioneer who was contemplating a home of his own in the near future. Marion had determined to win this, if it could be done without jeopardy to the ark and cargo.
Big Bone Creek is but a very small affluent of the Ohio, little more than a brook, in fact. It enters from the Kentucky shore through a fringe of willows, between low, sugar-loaf hills, then densely wooded by lofty sycamore and walnut. At low water boats could ascend this creek; but now the rising current set back into the mouth of it for a distance of fully two miles.