DANIEL BOONE.

prudence, and skill in the forest sports and occupations.

When he was at the age of eighteen, the family removed to the remote northwestern corner of North Carolina. His father settled on the banks of the Yadkin, and the son pursued with him the life of a farmer. The youth now took to himself a wife of the daughters of the land, Rebecca Bryan, destined to share with him many a mishap and triumph of the frontier.

DANIEL BOONE, the pioneer hunter poses of his life in habits of hardihood, of Kentucky, was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in February, 1735. His grandfather was an English emigrant, who came to America with his wife from the county of Devonshire, which furnished so much good blood to the New World. He settled in Bucks County, bringing with him, it is said, his family of eleven children. Of these, Squire Boone was the parent of the subject of our sketch. We read of his removing from the district, shortly after his son's birth, to It is curious to read of the motives the frontier hardships of Berks, the which, it is said, induced Boone to look distance between the Delaware and farther into the wilderness. The habits the Schuylkill, sufficient, in that day, to of North Carolina-it was exactly a make a frontiersman of the young hundred years ago—were even then, it Daniel. The woodland influences were seems, getting too luxurious for an as fresh there then as we can find them unsophisticated lover of freedom, like thousands of miles away in our own Boone. We might smile at the picture time. A simple, hardy population drawn of this early aristocracy by his lived face to face with nature. The biographers, of its signs of wealth schoolmaster had, indeed, penetrated which, perhaps, in the luxury of our to the spot with his elements of know- own day would be accounted little ledge imparted to shock-headed urchins better than poverty, did we not remem in a rude log-house, but the Mighty ber that the principle is the same, Mother without, in wood and fields, though the means of its exhibition has and mountains, was the great teacher. relatively changed. Labor, we are The young Boone learnt what was to told, was ceasing to afford an honorbe taught of reading, writing, and able support to the white man; slaves arithmetic from his unnamed preceptor, were on the increase, and certain Scotch and an infinite deal more for the pur- merchants were pompously ruling the

day with their equipage and expense quest of a habitation. A month's under the patronage of the colonial travel, in the spring of the year, court. Lawyers, too, began to abound as the country became more prosperous, and more than once in the history of our infant communities, when trade and finance were badly regulated, this gentry became, as in North Carolina at the time of which we are writing, objects of odium. Boone had a great distaste for the profession, though the bent of character which inflamed this dislike of the craft, must have tended to keep him out of the way of it in the first instance. We can hardly think that all this, the Scotchmen and the lawyers included, could very seriously affect the life of a simple farmer and hunter on the Yadkin, if he chose to be quiet. Rather should we look to the unresting mania of the genuine backwoodsman, whose cry is ever onward, pushing the ever-receding West before him, through stream and over mountain, to the edge of the Pacific.

Boone soon found his way over the present boundaries of North Carolina, to the head waters of the Holston and the Rock Castle of Kentucky, a tributary of the Cumberland. It was at first a mere exploring tour, but it brought him far on the way towards the scene of his future adventurous exploits.

brought the little party of six forest rangers, dressed in the hunting-shirt and supplied with the usual accoutrements of the craft, to a mountain eminence on the Red River, a stream flowing into the Kentucky, whence, at the close of a day in June, they first saw the far-stretching vale watered by that noble stream. The promised land was before them. The scene lives in description, and is a favorite subject for the painter. It is one of the memorable incidents, the landmarks of American civilization. Boone was then thirty-four, the prime of a hunter's manhood, sinewy, robust, resolute; full of strength of mind and of limb. He needed all these qualities to take possession of the hunter's paradise, which lay outspread before him. All splendid castles in this world worth taking possession of are guarded by infernal dragons of some species or other. The griffins of the fertile, game-flown, gametraversed, blessed hunting-grounds of Kentucky, were savage beasts which Boone and his companions did not mind much, and still more savage Indians, whom they were compelled to respect. These native warriors. had indeed no settled habitation there; it was the debatable "middle," "dark and bloody ground," roamed over in hostile collision by the tribes of the South and the North. So much the more formidable was it, perhaps, to the settler, who, whenever he encountered an Indian, would be pretty sure to meet him armed for the

In 1769 the call comes in earnest to the backwoodsman from his friend, John Finley, the adventurous trader and pioneer, who told of the wonders of wood and field in the hunting. grounds of the Indians, on the banks of the Kentucky. The two friends had previously explored something of the region together; they now went in fight.

separated from human life. Boone had occasional suspicions of the presence of Indians during this time in his tourings about his Robinson Crusoe hut;

Boone and his party pursued their hunting and explorations through the summer and autumn till December, without meeting with an Indian. Then Boone and Stewart, one of his com- but nothing of harm came of them. panions, were suddenly captured by a His brother reached him again at the party of the savages on the bank of the end of July, with fresh supplies and Kentucky. After a few days of im- horses, when they continued their exprisonment, they effected their escape plorations together, taking the range by night, and made their way, with of the Cumberland River. They were, difficulty, through the wilderness to however, attracted anew to the Kenthe encampment, from which they had tucky, which they resolved to make wandered. Their four associates were the scene of a permanent settlement. gone, to be seen no more in that They consequently returned home, carquarter. Boone and his friend were rying what peltry they could, with the left alone. Their ammunition now intention of bringing their families began to fail, and matters were looking from North Carolina. "Daniel had serious, when they were surprised by been absent two years, during which the arrival of two men, one of whom time he had tasted neither bread nor turned out to be Boone's own brother, salt, nor seen any other human being Squire, from North Carolina, bringing than his travelling companions and a welcome supply of powder and ball. the Indians who had taken him priIt was well that he arrived, for shortly soner."1 after, while Boone was out hunting with Stewart, the latter was picked off by an Indian, and scalped. The North Carolinian, also, who had accompanied Squire Boone, fell a prey to the perils of the region, and the two brothers were alone a pair of Crusoes in the wilderness.

It was two years before the family arrangements were made for the exodus from North Carolina. Then, having disposed of his farm and property, in September, 1773, the two brothers, with their wives and children, set out on their patriarchal pilgrimage to the land of promise. They carried clothing and provisions on pack horses, and drove a herd of cows and swine to furnish refreshment by the way and stock their future settlement. They crossed the dividing ridge into Tennes see, and were on their way through Powell's Valley, where they were joined by a considerable addition of

The winter was passed without interruption in their lodge, where they supported themselves by the chase, and clothed themselves, with hunter's craft, in the skins of the deer they slew. When spring came, the brothers parted, Squire towards the distant Yadkin in quest of supplies of ammunition, Boone to pursue his hunting alone, and solace himself as best he could in his solitary camp. For three months he was thus Biography.

'Life of Boone, by John M. Peck, in Sparks' American

five families and forty men, to the This company had reached this region, Cumberland Gap, when the rear-guard, or its neighborhood, when they were in charge of the cattle, was suddenly attacked by a party of Indians, and fallen upon by a party of Indians. several killed and wounded. The exSix of the whites fell in this attack; pedition, however, persevered in its among them, Boone's youngest son, plans, and on the first of April, 1775, James. This saddening misadventure commenced building a fort on the Kenarrested the movement of the expe- tucky River, to which the name Boonesdition, which now retired to the settle- borough was given. It was a substanments on Clinch River, in Virginia. tial work of hewn logs, with adjacent There Boone was summoned in June, houses protected by stockades, quite 1774, by Governor Dunmore, to tra- defensible against the Indians. Havverse Kentucky, to relieve a surveying ing made this preparation, Boone reparty, which had penetrated the coun- turned for his family, and brought them try from the Ohio. He performed this in safety to the spot. His wife and adventurous duty in a journey of sixty- daughters, he claimed, were the first two days, in which he travelled on foot white women that ever stood on the eight hundred miles. banks of the Kentucky River.

Having thus been introduced to the government, his next employment also was of an official character. The Indians northwest of the Ohio, led by the famous Cornstalk, were now showing themselves hostile on the Virginia frontier. A considerable force was sent against them, and a battle was fought at the junction of the Kanawha and the Ohio. Boone was appointed captain, and commanded three contiguous garrisons on the frontier. The war being ended, he returned to his family on Clinch River. The emigrants who had been arrested in transitu on their route, held themselves in readiness for the remainder of the journey. This was expedited by an arrangement made by Boone with a company formed in North Carolina for purposes of settlement, by which he was employed as their negotiator with the Indians, and surveyor of the route which lay between the Holston and the valley of the Kentucky.

The Indians did not relish the fort from the beginning. Though they made no onset at once, they were prowling about in the forest, watching their opportunity. In July, 1776, they suc ceeded in capturing a daughter of Boone, about fourteen years of age, who, with two female companions, ventured one afternoon in a canoe on the river. On the opposite shore they were caught by the Indians, who stealthily came out from the shrubbery on the bank, and turned their boat out of sight of the fort. Their shrieks were heard, but there was no other canoe at hand to overtake them. Boone being away, the pursuit could not be organized till his return in the evening. The next morning by daylight the trail was taken and pursued with difficulty, in consequence of the efforts of the savages at conceal ment. Thirty miles or more had been travelled, when they were overtaken at a halting-place, and so suddenly

pounced upon that the girls were safely with. He was led back to Chillicothe, recaptured.