dissatisfaction between them and the planters, the men of means and influence who with unfair taxation and injustice persecuted the less prosperous newcomers. Discontent grew and brought on events that were forerunners of the expansive militant movement that came in American life. First was the Declaration of Abingdon, Virginia, in January, 1775. Daniel Boone had led an expedition there sixteen years earlier and may have planted the seed in the minds of those who stayed on, while he went on to Kentucky. Title to much of the land which embraced Kentucky was claimed by the Cherokees. England still claimed the right to any territory in America and the war's beginnings left the whole thing in doubt. England might even make void Virginia's titles if she were so inclined. In the midst of these doubts and disputed claims several North Carolina gentlemen, including Richard Henderson and Nathaniel Hart, in the spring of 1775 formed themselves into the Transylvania Company for the purpose of acquiring title to the territory of Kentucky from the Cherokees. They meant to operate on a great scale, to establish an independent empire here in the "expansive West." They looked about for a man to help them. They didn't have to look long. There was Daniel Boone. He had a background. He'd scouted all over the country. He'd fought with Washington against the French when he was only in his teens. He was a fearless fellow; he knew how to deal with the Indian. So the Transylvania Company employed Daniel as their representative to negotiate with the Cherokees. The council met at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, a tributary of the Holston River. There the Cherokees ceded to the company for "ten thousand pounds, all the vast tract of land lying between the Ohio and Cumberland rivers, and west and south of the Kentucky." This region was called Transylvania. So, just six years after his first hunting trip to Kentucky, Boone began to colonize it and that in flat defiance of the British government. He thumbed his nose too at a menacing proclamation of North Carolina's royal governor. Now that the land was acquired by the Transylvania Company they would have to charter a course leading to and through it for prospective settlers. For theirs was a "land and improvement company." Again Daniel Boone was employed. This time his task was to open a path through the wilderness. With ax and tomahawk, with fighting and tribulations, he blazed the trail from Holston River to the mouth of Otter Creek on the Kentucky River. "Boone's Trace," they called it, connecting with the Warrior's Path and its extensions into eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina through Cumberland Gap and even beyond. It became the Wilderness Trail or Wilderness Road. It was the first through course from the mother state of Virginia to the West.