We have seen that Daniel Boone was neither the first explorer nor the first settler of Kentucky. The trans-Alleghany wilds had been trodden by many before him; even he was piloted through Cumberland Gap by Finley, and Harrodsburg has nearly a year's priority over Boonesborough. He had not the intellect of Clark or of Logan, and his services in the defense of the country were of less importance than theirs. He was not a constructive agent of civilization. But in the minds of most Americans there is a pathetic, romantic interest attaching to Boone that is associated with few if any others of the early Kentuckians. His migrations in the vanguard of settlement into North Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Missouri, each in their turn; his heroic wanderings in search of game and fresh lands; his activity and numerous thrilling adventures during nearly a half-century of border warfare; his successive failures to acquire a legal foothold in the wilderness to which he had piloted others; his persistent efforts to escape the civilization of which he had been the forerunner; his sunny temper amid trials of the sort that made of Clark a plotter and a misanthrope; his sterling integrity; his serene old age--all these have conspired to make for Daniel Boone a place in American history as one of the most lovable and picturesque of our popular heroes; indeed, the typical backwoodsman of the trans-Alleghany region. FOOTNOTE: [18] The story of the original Harding portrait, as gathered from statements to the present writer by members of the painter's family, supplemented by letters of Harding himself to the late Lyman C. Draper, is an interesting one. The artist used for his portrait a piece of ordinary table oil-cloth. For many years the painting was in the capitol at Frankfort, Ky., "from the fact that it was hoped the State would buy it." But the State had meanwhile become possessed of another oil portrait painted about 1839 or 1840 by a Mr. Allen, of Harrodsburg, Ky.--an ideal sketch, of no special merit. Harding's portrait, apparently the only one of Boone painted from life, was not purchased, for the State did not wish to be at the expense of two paintings. Being upon a Western trip, in 1861, Harding, then an old man and a resident of Springfield, Mass., rescued his portrait, which was in bad condition, and carried it home. The process of restoration was necessarily a vigorous one. The artist writes (October 6, 1861): "The picture had been banged about until the greater part of it was broken to pieces.... The head is as perfect as when it was painted, in color, though there are some small, almost imperceptible, cracks in it." The head and neck, down to the shirt-collar, were cut out and pasted upon a full-sized canvas; on this, Harding had "a very skilful artist" repaint the bust, drapery, and background, under the former's immediate direction. The picture in the present state is, therefore, a composite. The joining shows plainly in most lights.