This hatchet, however, really furnished no occasion for such strained conjectures and wild speculations. If the sycamore under which it was found was two hundred years old, as indicated by its annulations, it must have begun to grow about the time that Jamestown in Virginia and Quebec in Canada were founded. It would have been no unreasonable act for an Indian or white man to have brought this hatchet from the English on the James, or from the French on the St. Lawrence, to the Falls of the Ohio in 1608, just two hundred years before it was discovered by removing the tree that grew over it. The known habit of the sycamore, however, to make more than one annulation in years particularly favorable to growth suggests that two hundred annulations do not necessarily mean that many years. If we allow about fifty per cent of the life of the tree to have been during years exceptionally favorable to its growth, and assign double annulations to these favorable years, we shall have this tree to have made its two hundred annulations in about one hundred and thirty-nine years, and to have sprung from its seed and to have begun its growth about the year 1669 or 1670, when La Salle, the great French explorer, is believed to have been at the Falls of the Ohio. We have no account of any one at the Falls in 1608, or about this time, to support the conjecture that it might have come from Jamestown or Quebec; but we have La Salle at this place in 1669 or 1670, and it is not unreasonable that he should have left it here at that time. In this sense the old rusty hatchet, which is fortunately preserved, becomes interesting to us all for its connection with the discovery of Louisville. It is a souvenir of the first white man who ever saw the Falls of the Ohio. It is a memento of Robert Cavalier de La Salle, the discoverer of the site of the city of Louisville.
[12] A complete list of the club's publications is: _John Filson_, by R. T. Durrett (1884); _The Wilderness Road_, by Thomas Speed (1886); _The Pioneer Press of Kentucky_, by W. H. Perrin (1888); _Life and Times of Judge Caleb Wallace_, by W. H. Whitsitt (1888); _An Historical Sketch of St. Paul's Church_, by R. T. Durrett (1889); _The Political Beginnings of Kentucky_, by J. M. Brown (1889); _The Centenary of Kentucky_, by R. T. Durrett (1892); _The Centenary of Louisville_, by R. T. Durrett (1893); _The Political Club of Danville, Kentucky_, by Thomas Speed (1894); _The Life and Writings of Rafinesque_, by R. E. Call (1895); _Transylvania University_, by Dr. Robert Peter (1896); _Bryant's Station_, by R. T. Durrett (1897); _The First Explorations of Kentucky_, by J. S. Johnston (1898); _The Clay Family_, by Z. F. Smith and Mrs. Mary R. Clay (1899); _The Battle of Tippecanoe_, by Alfred Pirtle (1900); _Boonesborough_, by G. W. Ranck (1901); _The Old Masters of the Bluegrass_, by S. W. Price (1902); _The Battle of the Thames_, by B. H. Young (1903); _The Battle of New Orleans_, by Z. F. Smith (1904); _History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University_, by Dr. Robert Peter (1905); _Lopez's Expeditions to Cuba_, by A. C. Quisenberry (1906); _The Quest for a Lost Race_, by Dr. T. E. Pickett (1907); _Traditions of the Earliest Visits of Foreigners to North America_, by R. T. Durrett (1908); _Sketches of Two Distinguished Kentuckians_, by J. W. Townsend and S. W. Price (1909); _The Prehistoric Men of Kentucky_, by B. H. Young (1910); _The Kentucky Mountains_, by Miss Mary Verhoeff (1911). No publication was issued in 1912.