xt7bcc0tqt59 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7bcc0tqt59/data/mets.xml Flint, Timothy, 1780-1840. 1868  books b92f454b66f55018682009 English U. P. James : Cincinnatti, Ohio Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Boone, Daniel, 1734-1820 The life and adventures of Daniel Boone, the first settler of Kentucky, interspersed with incidents in the early annals of the country. text The life and adventures of Daniel Boone, the first settler of Kentucky, interspersed with incidents in the early annals of the country. 1868 2009 true xt7bcc0tqt59 section xt7bcc0tqt59 
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
   THE

LIFE AND ADVENTURES

OF

DANIEL BOONE,

THE FIRST SETTLER OF KENTUCKY,

interspersed with incidents in the

EARLY ANNALS OP THE COUNTRY.

By TIMOTHY FLINT.

NEW EDITION

To which is added an account of Captain Estill's Defeat.

CINCINNATI: PUBLISHED  BY   U. P. JAMES, No. 167 Walnut Street. 1868. 
   Entered according to Act of Congress, in tho year 1857, By U. P. JAMES, in tho Clerk's Office of tho District Court of the United States, for tho Southern District of Ohio.

THE ENGRAVINGS

on pages 2, 22, 42, 54, 65, 70, 75, 95, 120, and 146 wore mado for the original edition, and, therefore, are retained in this. 
   CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Birth of Daniel Boone   His early propensities   His pranks at school    His first hunting- expedition   And his encounter with a panther. Removal of the family to North Carolina   Boone becomes a hunter    Description of fire hunting, in which he was near committing a sad mistake   Its fortunate result   and his marriage.

CHAPTER II.

Boone removes to the head waters of the Yadkin river   He insets with Finley, who had crossed the mountains into Tennessee   They agree to explore the wilderness wist of the Alleghanies together.

CHAPTER III.

Boone, with Finley and others, start on their exploring expedition    Boone kills a panther in the night   Their progress over the mountains   They descend into the great valley   Description of the new country   Herds of buffaloes   Their wanderings in the wilderness.

CHAPTER IV.

The exploring party divide into different routes   Boone and Stewart taken prisoners by the Indians, and their escape   Bonne meets with his elder brother and another white man in the woods   Stewart kil-'ed by the Indians, and the companion of the elder Boone destroyed by wolves   The elder brother returns to North Carolina, leaving Boone alone in the wilderness.

CHAPTER V.

Boone is pursued by the Indians, and eludes their pursuit   He encounters and kills a bear   The return of his brother with ammunition    They explore the country   Boone kills a panther on the back of a buffalo   They return to North Carolina.

CHAPTER VI.

Boone starts with his family to Kentucky   Their return to Clinch river    He conducts a party of surveyors to the Falls of Ohio   He helps build Boonesborough, and removes his family to the fort   His jaugii ter and two of Col. Calloway's daughters taken prisoners by the Indians   They pursue the Indians and rescue the captives.

CHAPTER VII.

Settlement of Harrodsburgh   Indian mode of besieging and warfare   * Fortitude and privation of the Pioneers   The Indians attack Harrodsburgh and Boonesborough   Description of a Station   Attack Of Bryant's Station. 
   COjVTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.

Boone being attacked by two Indians near the Blue Licks, kills them bodi   Is afterwards taken prisoner and marched to Old Chillicothe -Is adopted by the Indians   Indian ceremonies.

CHAPTER IX.

Boone becomes a favorite among the Indians   Anecdotes relating to his captivity   Their mode of tormenting and burning prisoners   Then fortitude under the infliction of torture   Concerted attack on Boonesborough   Boone escapes.

CHAPTER X.

Six hundred Indians attack Boonesborough   Boone and Captain Smith go out 10 treat with the enemy under a flag of truce, and are extricated from a treacherous attempt to detain them as prisoners    Defence of the fort   The Indians defeated   Boone goes to North Carolina to bring back his family.

CHAPTER XI.

A skr*ch of the character and adventures of several other pioneers    Harrod, Kent on, Logan, Ray, McAffee, and others.

CHAPTER XII.

Boone's brother killed, and Boone himself narrowly escapes from the Inilians   Assault upon Ashton's station   and upon the station near Shelbyville   Attack upon McAltee's station.

CHAPTER XIII.

Disastrous battle near the Blue Licks   General Clarke's expedition against the Miami towns   Massacre of McClure's family   'ITie horrors of Indian assaults throughout the settlements   General Hannai's expedition   Defeat of General St. Clair   Gen. Wayne's victory, and a final peace with the Indians.

CHAPTER XIV.

Rejoicings on account of the peace   Boone indulges his propensity for hunting   Kentucky increases in population   Some account of their conflicting land titles   Progress of civil improvement destroying the range of the hunter   Litigation of land titles   Boone loses his lands       Removes from Kentucky to the Kanawha   Leaves the Kanawha and goes to Missouri, where he is appointed Commandant.

CHAPTER XV.

Anecdotes of Colonel Boone, related by Mr. Audubon   A remarkable instance of memory.

CHAPTER XVI.

Progress of improvement in Missouri   Old age of Boone   Death of his wife   He goes to reside with his son   His death   His personal ap-prwrance and character. 
   PREFACE.

Our eastern brethren have entered heartily into the pious duty of bringing to remembrance the character and deeds of their forefathers. Shall we of the west allow the names of those great men, who won for us, from the forest, the savages, and wild beasts, our fair domain of fertile fields and beautiful rivers, to fade into oblivion? They who have hearts to admire nobility imparted by nature's great seal   fearlessness, strength, energy, sagacity, generous forgetfulness of self, the delineation of scenes of terror, and the relation of deeds of daring, will not fail to be interested in a sketch of the life of the pioneer and hunter of Kentucky, Daniel Boone. Contemplated in any light, we shall find him in his way and walk, a man as truly great as Penn, Marion, and Franklin, in theirs. True, he was not learned in the lore of books, or trained in the etiquette of cities. But he possessed a knowledge far more important in the sphere which Providence called him to fill. He felt, too, the conscious dignity of self-respect, and would have been seen as erect, firm, and unembarrassed amid the pomp and splendor of the proudest court in Christendom, as in the shade of hia own wilderness. Where nature in her own ineffaceable characters has marked superiority, she looks down upon the tiny and elaborate acquirements "of art, and in all positions and in all time entitles her favorites to the involuntary homage of their fellow-men. They are the selected pilots in storms, the leaders in battles, and the pioneers in the colonization of new countries. 
   preface.

Such a man was Daniel Boone, and wonderfully was he endowed by Providence for the part which he was called to act. Far be it from us to undervalue the advantages of education: It can do every thing but assume the prerogative of Providence. God has reserved for himself the attribute of creating. Distinguished excellence has never been attained, unless where nature and education, native endowment and circumstances, have concurred. This wonderful man received his commission for his achievements and his peculiar walk from the sign manual of nature. He was formed to be a woodsman, and the adventurous precursor in the first settlement of Kentucky. His home was in the woods, where others were bewildered and lost. It is a mysterious spectacle to see a man possessed of such an astonishing power of being perfectly familiar with his route and his resources in the depths of the untrodden wilderness, where others could as little divine their way, and what was to be done, as mariners on mid-ocean, without chart or compass, sun, moon, or stars. But that nature has bestowed these endowments upon some men and denied them to others, is as certain as that she has given to some animals instincts of one kind, fitting them for peculiar modes of life, which are denied to others, perhaps as strangely endowed in another way.

The following pages aim to present a faithful picture of this singular man, in his wanderings, captivities, and escapes. If the effort be successful, we have no fear that the attention of the reader will wander. There is a charm in such recitals, which lays its spell upon all. The grave and gay, the simple and the learned, the young and gray-haired alike yield to its influence.

We wish to present him in his strong incipient manifestations of the development of his peculiar character in boyhood.   We then see him on foot and alone, witn no 
   preface.

companion but his dog, and no friend but his rifle, making his way over trackless and unnamed mountains, and im measurable forests, until he explores the flowering wilderness of Kentucky. Already familiar, by his own peculiar intuition, with the Indian character, we see him casting his keen and searching glance around, as the ancient woods rung with the first strokes of his axe, and pausing from time to time to see if the echoes have startled the red men, or the wild beasts from their lair. We trace him through all the succeeding explorations of the Bloody Ground, and of Tennessee, until so many immigrants have followed in his steps, that he finds his privacy too strongly pressed upon; until he finds the buts and bounds of regal tenures restraining his free thoughts, and impelling him to the distant and unsettled shores of the Missouri, to seek range and solitude anew. We see him there, his eyes beginning to grow dim with the influence of seventy winters   as he can no longer take the unerring aim of his rifle   casting wistful looks in the direction of the Rocky Mountains and the western sea; and sadly reminded that man has but one short life, in which to wander.

No book can be imagined more interesting than would have been the personal narrative of such a man, written by himself. What a newpattern of the heart he might have presented! But, unfortunately, he does not seem to have dreamed of the chance that his adventures would go down to posterity in the form of recorded biography. We suspect that he rather eschewed books, parchment deeds, and clerkly contrivances, as forms of evil; and held the dead letter of little consequence. His associates were aa little likely to preserve any records, but those of memory, of the daily incidents and exploits, which indicate character and assume high interest, when they relate to a person like the subj ect of this narrative. These hunters, unerring 
   preface.

in their aim to prostrate the buffalo on his plain, or to bring down the geese and swans from the clouds, thought little of any other use of the gray goose quill, than its market value.

Had it been otherwise, and had these men themselves furnished the materials of this narrative, we have no fear that it would go down to futurity, a more enduring monument to these pioneers and hunters, than the granite columns reared by our eastern brethren, amidst assembled thousands, with magnificent array, and oratory, and songs, to the memory of their forefathers. Ours would be the record of human nature speaking to human nature in simplicity and truth, in a language always impressive, and always understood. Their pictures of their own felt sufficiency to themselves, under the pressure of exposure and want; of danger, wounds, and captivity; of reciprocal kindness, warm from the heart; of noble forgetfulness of self, unshrinking firmness, calm endurance, and reckless bravery, would be sure to move in the hearts of their readers strings which never fail to vibrate to the touch.

But these inestimable data are wanting. Our materials are comparatively few; and we have been often obliged to balance between doubtful authorities, notwithstanding the most rigorous scrutiny of newspapers and pamphlets, whose yellow and dingy pages gave out a cloud of dust at every movement, and the equally rigid examination of clean modern books and periodicals. 
   LIFE OF DANIEL BOONE.

CHAPTER I.

Birth of Daniel Boone   His early propensities   His pranks at schoo"    His first hunting expedition   And his encounter with a panther. Removed of the family to North Carolina   Boone becomes a hunter    Description of fire hunting, in which he was near committing a sad mistake   Its fortunate result   and his marriage.

Different authorities assign a different birth place to Daniel Boone. One affirms that he was born in Maryland, another in North Carolina, another in Virginia, and still another during the transit of his parents across the Atlantic. But they are all equally in error. He was born in the year 1746, in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, near Bristol, on the right bank of the Delaware, about twenty miles from Philadelphia. His father removed, when he was three years old, to the vicinity of Reading, on the head waters of* the Schuylkill. From thence, when his son was thirteen years old, he migrated to North Carolina, and settled in one of the valleys of South Yadkin.

The remotest of his ancestors, of whom there is any recorded notice, is Joshua Boone, an English 
   12

lite of daniel boonh.

Catholic. He crossed the Atlantic to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, with those who planted the first germ of the colony of Maryland. A leading motive to emigration with most of these colonists, was to avoid that persecution on account of their religion, which however pleasant to inflict, they found it uncomfortable to endure. Whether this gentleman emigrated from this inducement, as has been asserted, or not, it is neither possible, nor, as we deem, important to settle; for we cannot find, that religious motives had any direct influence in shaping the character and fortunes of the hero of the woods. Those who love to note the formation of character, and believe in the hereditary transmission of peculiar qualities, naturally investigate the peculiarities of parents, to see if they can find there the origin of those of the children. Many   and we are of the number   consider transmitted endowment as the most important link in the chain of circumstances, with which character is surrounded. The most splendid endowments in innumerable instances, have never been brought to light, in defect of circumstances to call them forth. The ancestors of Boone were not placed in positions to prove, whether he did or did not receive his peculiar aptitudes a legacy from his parents, or a direct gift from nature. He presents himself to us as a new man, the author and artificer of his own fortunes, and showing from the beginning rudiments of character, of which history has recorded no trace in his ancestors. The promise of the future hunter appeared in his earliest boyhood. He waged a war of extermination, as soon as he 
   life of daniel boone.

J3

could poise a gun, with squirrels, racoons, and wild cats, at that time exceedingly annoying to the fields and barn-yards of the back settlers.

No scholar ever displayed more decided pre-eminence in any branch of learning, than he did above the boys of his years, in adroitness and success in this species of hunting. This is the only distinct and peculiar trait of character recorded of his early years. The only transmitted fact of his early training is presented in the following anecdote.

In that section of the frontier settlement to which Boone had removed, where unhewn log cabins, and hewn log houses, were interspersed among the burnt stumps, surrounded by a potato patch and cornfield, as the traveller pursued his cow-path through the deep forest, there was an intersection, or more properly concentration of wagon tracks, called the "Cross Roads,"   a name which still designates a hundred frontier positions of a post office, blacksmith's shop, and tavern. In the central point of this metropolis stood a large log building, before which a sign creaked in the wind, conspicuously lettered "Store and Tavern."

To this point, on the early part of a warm spring morning, a pedestrian stranger was seen approaching in the path leading from the east. One hand was armed with a walking stick, and the other carried a Email bundle inclosed in a handkerchief. His aspect was of a man, whose whole fortunes were in his walking stick and bundle. He was observed to eye trie swinging sign with a keen recognition, inspiring 
   14

life of daniel boone.

such courage as the mariner feels on entering the desired haven.

His dialect betrayed the stranger to be a native, of Ireland. He sat down on the stoup, and asked in hi? own peculiar mode of speech, for cold water. A supply from the spring was readily handed him in a gourd. But with an arch pause between remonstrance and laughter, he added, that he thought cold water in a warm climate injurious to the stomach and begged that the element might be qualified with a little whisky.

The whisky was handed him, and the usual conversation ensued,during which the stranger inquired if a schoolmaster was wanted in the settlement   or, as he was pleased tc phrase it, a professor in the higher branches of learning? It is inferred that the father of Boone was a person of distinction in the settlement, for to him did the master of the "Store and Tavern" direct the stranger of the staff and bundle for information.

The direction of the landlord to enable him to find the house of Mr. Boone, was a true specimen of similar directions in the frontier settlements of the present; and they have often puzzled clearer heads than that of the Irish school-master.

"Step this way," said he,"and I will direct you there, so that you cannot mistake your way. Turn down that right hand road, and keep on it till you cross the dry branch   then turn to your left, and go up a hill   then take a lane to your right, which will bring you to an open field   pass this, and you will come to a path with three forks   take the middle 
   life of daniel boone.

15

fork, and it will lead you through the woods in sight of Mr. Boone's plantation."

The Irishman lost his way, invoked the saints, and cursed his director for his medley of directions many a time, before he stumbled at length on Mr. Boone's house. He was invited to sit down and dine, in the simple backwoods phrase, which is still the passport to the most ample hospitality.

After dinner, the school-master made known his vocation, and his desire to find employment. To obtain a qualified school-master in those days, and in such a place, was no easy business. This scarcity of supply precluded close investigation of fitness. In a word, the Irishman was authorized to enter upon the office of school-master of the settlement. We have been thus particular in this description, because it was the way in which most teachers were then employed.

It will not be amiss to describe the school-house; for it stood as a sample of thousands of west country school-houses of the present day. It was of logs, after the usual fashion of the time and place. In dimension, it was spacious and convenient. The chimney was peculiarly ample, occupying one entire side of the whole building, which was an exact Bquare. Of course, a log could be "snaked" to the fire-place as long as the building, and a file of boys thirty feet in length, could all stand in front of the fire on a footing of the most democratic equality. Sections of logs cut out here and there, admitted light and air instead of windows. The surrounding forest furnished ample supplies of fuel.   A spring at 
   16

LIFE OF DANIEL BOONE    

hand, furnished with various gourds, quenched the frequent thirst of the pupils. A ponderous puncheon door, swinging on substantial wooden hinges, and shutting with a wooden latch, completed the appendages of this primeval seminary.

To this central point might be seen wending from the woods, in every direction of the compass, flaxen-headed boys and girls, clad in homespun, brushing away the early dews, as they hied to the place, where the Hibernian, clothed in his brief authority, sometimes perpetrated applications of birch without rhyme or reason; but much oftener allowed his authority to be trampled upon, according as the severe or loving humor prevailed. This vacillating administration was calculated for any result, rather than securing the affectionate respect of the children. Scarcely the first quarter had elapsed, before materials for revolt had germinated under the very throne of the school-master.

Young Boone, at this time,had reached the second stage of teaching the young idea how to shoot. His satchel already held paper marked with those mysterious hieroglyphics, vulgarly called pot-hooks, intended to be gradually transformed to those clerkly characters, which are called hand-writing.

The master's throne was a block of a huge tree, and could not be said, in any sense, to be a cushion of down. Of course, by the time he had heard the first lessons of the morning, the master was accustomed to let loose his noisy subjects, to wanton and bound on the grass, while he took a turn abroad to refresh himself from his wearying duties.   While he 
   LIFE OF DANIEL BOONE.

17

was thus unbending his mind, the observant urchins had remarked, that he always directed his walk to a deep grove not far distant. They had, possibly, divined that the unequal tempers of his mind, and his rapid transitions from good nature to tyrannical moroseness, and the reverse, were connected with these promenades. The curiosity of young Boone had been partially excited. An opportunity soon oifcred to gratify it.

Having one day received the accustomed permission to retire a fewr minutes from school, the darting of a squirrel across a fallen tree, as he went abroad, awakened his ruling passion. He sprang after the nimble animal, until he found himself at the very spot, where he had observed his school-master to pause in his promenades. His attention was arrested by observing a kind of opening under a little arbor, thickly covered with a mat of vines. Thinking, perhaps, that it was the retreat of some animal, he thrust in his hand, and to his surprise drew forth a glass bottle, partly full of whisky. The enigma of his master's walks and inequalities of temper stood immediately deciphered. After the reflection of a moment, he carefully replaced the bottle in its position, and returned to his place in school. In the evening he communicated his discovery and the result of his meditations to the larger boys of the school on their way home. They were ripe for revolt, and the issue of their caucus follows:

Thev were sufficiently acquainted with fever and

ague, to have experimented the nature of tartar

emetic.   They procured a bottle exactly like the

2 
   18

life of daniel boone.

master's, filled with whisky, in which a copious quantity of emetic had been dissolved. Early in the morning, they removed the school-master's bottle, and replaced it by theirs, and hurried back to their places, panting with restrained curiosity, and a do-sire to see what results would come from their medical mixture.

The accustomed hour for intermission came. The master look his usual promenade, and the children hastened back with uncommon eagerness to resume their seats and their lessons. The countenance of the master alternately red and pale, gave portent of an approaching storm.

"Recite your grammar lesson," said he, in a grow ling tone, to one of the older boys.

"How many parts of speech are there?"

"Seven, sir," timidly answered the boy.

"Seven, you numscull! is that the way you get your lesson?" Forthwith descended a shower of blows on his devoted head.

"On what continent is Ireland ?" said he, turning from him in wrath to another boy. The boy saw the shower pre-determined to fall, and the medicine giving evident signs of having taken effect. Before he could answer, "I reckon on the continent of England," he was gathering an ample tithe of drubbing.

"Come and recite your lesson in arithmetic?" said he to Boone, in a voice of thunder. The usually rubicund face of the Irishman was by this time a deadly pale. Slate in hand, the docile lad presented himself before his master.

"Take six from nine, and what remains ?" 
   life of daniel boone.

19

"Three, sir."

"True. That will answer for whole numbers, now for your fractions. Take three-quarters from an integer, and what remains?"

"The whole."

"You blockhead! you numscull!" exclaimed the master, as the strokes fell like a hail shower; "let me hear you demonstrate that."

"If I subtract one bottle of whisky, and replace it with one in which I have mixed an emetic, will not the whole remain, if nobody drinks it?"

By this time the medicine was taking fearful effect. The united acclamations and shouts of the children, and the discovery of the compounder of his medicament, in no degree tended to soothe the infuriated master. Young Boone, having paid for his sport by an ample drubbing, seized the opportune moment, floored his master, already weak and dizzy, sprang from the door, and made for the woods. The adventure was soon blazoned. A consultation of the patrons of the school was held. Though young Boone was reprimanded, the master was dismissed.

This is all the certain information we possess, touching the training of young Boone, in the lore of books and schools. Though he never afterwards could be brought back to the restraint of the walls of a school, it is well known, that in some way, in after life, he possessed himself of the rudiments of a common education. His love for hunting and the woods now bccamG an absorbing passion. He possessed a dog and a fowling piece, and with these he 
   20

life of daniel boone.

would range whole days alone through the woods, often with no other apparent object, than the simple pleasure of these lonely wanderings.

One morning he was observed as usual, to throw the band, that suspended his shot bag, over one shoulder, and his gun over the other, and go forth accompanied by his dog. Night came, but to the astonishment and alarm of his parents, the boy, as yet scarcely turned of fourteen, came not. Another day and another night came, and passed, and still he returned not. The nearest neighbors, sympathizing with the distressed parents, who considered him lost, turned out, to aid in searching for him. After a long and weary search, at a distance of a-league from any plantation, a smoke was seen arising from a temporary hovel of sods and blanches, in which the astonished father found his child, apparently most comfortably established is his new experiment of house-keeping. Numerous skins of wild animals were stretched upon his cabin, as trophies of his hunting prowess. Ample fragments of their flesh were either roasting or preparing for cookery. It may be supposed, that such a lad would be the theme of wonder and astonishment to the other boys of his age.

At this early period, he hesitated not to hunt wolves, and even bears and panthers. His exploits of this kind were the theme of general interest in the vicinity. Many of them are recorded. But we pass over most of them, in our desire to hasten to the exploits of his maturer years.   We select a sin- 
   life of daniel boone.

21

gle one of the most unquestionable character, as a sample for the rest.

In company with some of his young companions he undertook a hunting excursion, at a considerable distance from the settlements. Near night-fall, the group of young Nimrods were alarmed with a sharp cry from the thick woods. A panther! whispered the affrighted lads, in accents scarcely above their breath, through fear, that their voice would betray them. The scream of this animal is harsh, and grating, and one of the most truly formidable of forest sounds.

The animal, when pressed, does not shrink from encountering a man, and often kills him, unless he is fearless and adroit in his defence. All the companions of young Boone fled from the vicinity, as fast as possible. Not so the subject of our narrative. He coolly surveyed the animal, that in turn eyed him, as the cat does a mouse, when preparing to spring upon it. Levelling his rifle, and taking deliberate aim, he lodged the bullet in the heart of the fearful animal, at the very moment it was in the act to spring upon him. It was a striking instance of that peculiar self-possession, which constituted the most striking trait in his character in after life.

Observing these early propensities for the life of a hunter in his son, and land having become dear and game scarce in the neighborhood where he lived Boone's father formed the design of removing to remote forests, not yet disturbed by the sound of the axe, or broken by frequent clearings; and having heard a good account of the country bordering upon 
   ^^^^^^ 
   life of daniel boone.

23

the Yadkin river, in North Carolina, he resolved to remove thither. This river, which is a stream of considerable size, has its source among the mountains in the north-east part of North Carolina, and pursues a beautiful meandering course through that state until it enters South Carolina. After watering the eastern section of the latter state, it reaches the ocean a few miles above the mouth of the San tee.

Having sold his plantation, on a fine April morning he set forth for the land of promise   wife, children, servants, flocks, and( herds, forming a patriarchal caravan through the wilderness. No procession bound to the holy cities of Mecca or Jerusalem, was ever more joyful; for to them the forest was an asylum. Overhung by the bright blue sky, enveloped in verdant forests full of game, nought cared they for the absence of houses with their locks and latches. Their nocturnal caravansary was a clear cool spring; their bed the fresh turf. Deer and turkeys furnished their viands   hunger the richest sauces of cookery; and fatigue and untroubled spirits a repose unbroken by dreams. Such were the primitive migrations of the early settlers of our country. We love to meditate on them, for we have shared them. We have fed from this table in the wilderness. We have shared this mirth. We have heard the tinkle of the bells of the flocks and herds grazing among the trees. We have seen the moon rise and the stars twinkle upon this forest scene; and the remembrance has more than once marred the pleasure of journeyings in the midst of civilization and the refinements of luxury. 
   24

life of daniel boone.

The frontier country in which the family settled was as yet an unbroken forest; and being at no great distance from the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, in the valleys of which game was abundant, it afforded fine range both for pasture and hunting. These forests had, moreover, the charm of novelty; and the game had not yet learned to fear the rifles of the new settlers. It need hardly be added that the spirits of young Boone exulted in this new hunter's paradise. The father and the other sons settled down quietly to the severe labor of making a farm, assigning to Daniel the occupation of his rifle, as aware that it was the only one he could be induced to follow; and probably from the experience, that in this way he could contribute more effectually to the establishment, than either of them in the pursuits of husbandry.

An extensive farm was soon opened. The table was always amply supplied with venison, and was the seat of ample and unostentatious hospitality. The peltries of the young hunter yielded all the money which such an establishment required, and the interval between this removal and the coming of age of young Boone, was one of health, plenty, and privacy.

But meanwhile this settlement began to experience the pressure of that evil which Boone always considered the greatest annoyance of life. The report of this family's prosperity had gone abroad. The young hunter's fame in his new position, attracted other immigrants to come and fix themselves in the vicinity.   The smoke of new cabins

9 
   lifts of daniel boone.

25

and clearings went up to the sky. The baying of other dntrs. and the crash of distant falling trees began to be heard; and painful presentiments already filled the bosom of young Boone, that this abode would shortly be more pressed upon than that he had left. He was compelled, however, to admit, that if such an order of things brings disadvantages, it has also its benefits.

A thriving farmer, by the name of Bryan, had settled at no great distance from Mr. Boone