Boone and Stewart then set out to the camp where they had left their comrades, which they reached after several days travel, only to find it plundered and deserted; their companions gone they knew not whither. It is presumed, of course, that the plundering had been done by Indians, and their comrades murdered by them though this is conjecture only. Certain it is that their names no more appear in history. Boone and Stewart, not dismayed by the misfortunes of their comrades, did not turn their faces towards North Carolina, but constructed another camp and, though short of ammunition, continued hunting and exploring as before. It must be assumed that on their escape from the Indians, they had brought away their guns and ammunition. One historian reports them as amusing themselves in hunting and exploring, which statement, if correct, indicates that certain natures can find amusement under the most adverse circumstances. But even this method of amusement drew near its end as their slender stock of ammunition was nearly exhausted, when there happened an incident tending to show that Providence was on the side of the gallant hunters and explorers.

The family of Daniel Boone grew alarmed because of his long absence, during which, of course, they had heard nothing from him, and his faithful brother, Squire Boone, with a single companion whose name is to history unknown, set forth to find him. This illustrates the spirit of the pioneer; his carelessness of danger; his purpose to go on and do that which his duty called him to do, fearing nothing, daring all things and through these high qualities winning in the end, as Squire Boone and his unknown companion did in this instance. McElroy says of them: "With no chart to guide them, with no knowledge of the location of the wanderers, amid thousands of miles of unbroken forest, it seems little short of a miracle that early in January, 1770, they came upon the camp in which Boone and

Stewart had spent the previous night. Even after this discovery, it might have been a sufficiently difficult task for any but an Indian or pioneer to find the wanderers. But to a woodsman so new a trail could not be missed, and shortly afterward Boone and Stewart were startled to see two human forms approaching through the forest. Instantly alert and on guard against surprises, they watched the figures until, as they came within the range of clear vision, Boone recognized the beloved form of his faithful brother."

John Filson, the biographer of Boone, makes the old hero describe this momentous event in the following terms: "About this time my brother, Squire Boone, with another adventurer, who came to explore the country shortly after us, was wandering through the forest, determined to find me, if possible and accidentally found our camp." Again there is a failure to name Squire Boone's fellow adventurer who appears to have wandered away from his comrades and never returned either to them or to his home in North Carolina. And so he passed into the early history of Kentucky and out of it again, nameless and unknown so far as most historical research has shown. But John Filson reports Danie Boone as saying to him: "The man who came with my brother returned home by himself. We were then in a dangerous, helpless situation, exposed daily to perils and death amongst the savages and wild beasts, not a white man in the country but ourselves." Boone, it will be observed, does not give the name of this man. It is charitable to suppose that he did not desert his comrades, but fell at the hands of the savages; and there let him

rest.

Boone had no thought of turning back. Filson does him the high honor of saying that Boone considered himself "an instrument ordained to settle the wilderness." Bogart in his "Boone" says: "On the safety of these men rested the hope of a nation. Their defeat,

their captivity, their death would have chilled the vigor of enterprise. Without Boone the settlements could not have been held, and the conquest of Kentucky would have been reserved for the immigrants of the nineteenth century."

He might have added that without Boone and the results of his coming to Kentucky, the splendid results following in after years the activity of George Rogers Clark, would have been an impossibility; and the immense territory which he added to our domain would later have been gained only with great loss of life, and it may be would have been indefinitely left in the hands of those from whose hands the heroic Clark so easily took it. Kentucky, though giving Boone a grave in her capital, has never paid to him the debt of honor and gratitude which was his due. It is not to the credit of the state that he sought a resting place first on Virginia, where he was honored, and lastly in Missouri, where the brave old pioneer finally laid down life's burden and found in the grave the only peace his restless spirit had ever known.

In May, 1770, their stock of ammunition being again nearly exhausted, Squire Boone, it was determined, should return home "for a new recruit of horses and ammunition." Daniel Boone being thus left alone in the wilderness was the only white man, so far as he knew, in all Kentucky. Stewart, his gallant and long-time comrade, had been killed by the Indians soon after they were joined by Squire Boone, thus being the first martyr to western exploration so far as is accurately known.

To make the trip to North Carolina and return, required some three months, during which Boone must have grown very lonely. Filson makes him say, and no doubt truthfully: "I confess I was never before under greater necessity of exercising philosophy and fortitude. A few days I passed uncomfortably." Note that expression of "a few days." Boone was not the man to give way to his feelings,

else he would never have been the successful pioneer that he was. Some one has said of him that he was once asked if he was never lost in the wilderness, to which he replied that he was never lost but "was once bewildered for three days"; which is a fair companion piece to the statement of the Indian who declared "Indian not lost; wigwam lost."

Boone spent the months of waiting in explorations to the southwest which appear to have brought him to Salt river and Green river. Signs of Indians were abundant, but he had now become so expert a woodman that he managed to avoid meeting any of them. He slept without a fire and made his camps in the dense canebrakes and thus avoided his savage foes. July 27, 1770, he returned to his old camp where to his great happiness his brother met him. Indian signs warned them of their danger and turning to the southward they explored the region along the Cumberland, finding abundant game, but a poorer soil than that which they had left. In March, 1771, they went northward toward the Kentucky river, finally selecting a point for the permanent settlement which they had planned. and then loading their furs and few other belongings upon their two horses they turned their faces once more towards North Carolina and civilization; of which Boone had known nothing for two years, "during most of which time," says McElroy, "he had neither tasted bread nor seen the face of man with the exception of his brother, his unfortunate fellow hunters now gone, and a few straggling Indians, more animal than human; but at its close, he was a real Kentuckian, the first Kentuckian, ready at all times to speak in unmeasured praise of the land which," he says, "I esteemed a second Paradise."

It may be of interest to some to note here that the fame of Daniel Boone, in after years, did not rest alone with those by whom he was immediately surrounded, but had gone across the seas to England, whose poet, Lord Byron,

Boone had supposed himself while awaiting the return of his brother, the only white man in Kentucky, in which he was mistaken; as at the same time, a party of forty Virginia hunters from the mountainous regions about New river, the Holston and Clinch, had come into the country fully equipped for hunting and trapping, and, as a matter of course, for such Indian fighting as they might fall upon. These hunters passed through the Cumberland Gap, which years afterwards was to figure large in a greater warfare than Kentucky ever knew in her pioneer days. These men camped on the Cumberland river in what was later to become Wayne county and established a depot for trade with the Indians-a somewhat singular statement when one considers the relations that had existed between the savages and the few other white men who had ventured to intrude upon their chosen hunting ground. From this depot, small parties of hunters went out hunting and exploring with the understanding that they were to come into headquarters once in five weeks, report their experiences and deposit the spoils of their skill. This did not wholly suit the woodsmen and one after another these bands set up in business for themselves and declined to report, or else deserted.

Ten of these men are reported to have constructed transports, loaded them with skins and the flesh of the wild animals they had slain and, floating down the Cumberland into

the Ohio and later into the Mississippi, finally reached Natchez. There they are reputed to have made sale of their cargo at the Spanish fort at that point, afterwards returning overland to their far-away homes in Virginia. It is difficult to believe that these men in the midst of an absolute wilderness, with but few tools at hand, should have been able to construct transports sufficiently seaworthy to convey themselves and their cargoes to the port of Natchez on the Mississippi, many hundreds of miles from the starting point. How much of the statement is real history, and how much mere tradition, will never be known. It is a part of the history or tradition, as you will have it, that many of these adventurous men on their return from Natchez were lost in the wilderness, where they doubtless fell a prey to the savages, as they were never again heard of.

Col. James Knox, leader of the party from Virginia, who does not appear to have participated in the apochryphal Natchez expedition, with nine companions, pushed into the wilderness to a point near where Greensburg in Green county is now located, establishing there a second trading station, and exploring the region which was later to form the counties of Barren, Hart, Edmonson and others. Knox remained two years in what was then known as the Kentucky district, but which for convenience sake will always be referred to

hunters" bestowed upon these Virginia hunt

ers.

In 1773, Daniel Boone, having sold his property in North Carolina, set out for Kentucky accompanied by his own and several other families, having in view a permanent settlement in the new land, being joined, en route, by some forty other adventurous souls. Impeded by the size of the party and the slowness of their pack animals and other cattle, the party, after much delay, reached Cumberland. Gap when, just as they were about to cross the mountains, an attack was made by the Indians and six of the party were killed. The remain

James, George and Robert McAfee, James Harrod and James Douglas and perhaps others, the names above quoted being regarded as the chief or ruling spirits of the party. The object sought in sending out this party was ostensibly to induce settlements in Kentucky, as a guard against Indian depredations upon Virginia settlements, though recalling the AngloSaxon hunger for land, one is not without suspicion that the shrewd British governor had also in mind the increase of his private real estate holdings.

These surveyors held a council with the Indians at Chillicothe, Ohio, and soon afterward