It was small wonder that the Kentuckians should chafe under
such arbitrary and unequal restraints, and should threaten to break
through them by force. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, iv., 630.]
The most successful traders were of course those who contrived to
establish relations with some one in New Orleans, or perhaps in Natchez,
who would act as their agent or correspondent. The profits from a
successful trip made amends for much disaster, and enabled the trader to
repeat his adventure on a larger scale. Thus, among the papers of George
Rogers Clark there is a letter from one of his friends who was living in
Kaskaskia in 1784, and was engaged in the river trade. [Footnote: Draper
MSS. Letter of John Williams, June 20, 1784.] The letter was evidently
to the writer's father, beginning "My dear daddy." It describes how he
had started on one trip to New Orleans, but had been wrecked; how,
nothing daunted, he had tried again with a cargo of forty-two beeves,
which he sold in New Orleans for what he deemed the good sum of $738;
and how he was about to try his luck once more, buying a bateau and
thirty bushels of salt, enough to pickle two hundred beeves.
Risks of the Traders.
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