Boone was now in frequent demand as a pilot and surveyor by capitalists who relied upon his unrivaled knowledge of the country to help them find desirable tracts of land; often he was engaged to meet incoming parties of immigrants over the Wilderness Road, with a band of riflemen to guard them against Indians, to furnish them with wild meat--for the newcomers at first were inexpert in killing buffaloes--and to show them the way to their claims. He was prominent as a pioneer; as county lieutenant he summoned his faithful men-at-arms to repel or avenge savage attacks; and his fame as hunter and explorer had by this time not only become general throughout the United States but had even reached Europe. His reputation was largely increased by the appearance in 1784 of the so-called "autobiography." We have seen that, although capable of roughly expressing himself on paper, and of making records of his rude surveys, he was in no sense a scholar. Yet this autobiography, although signed by himself, is pedantic in form, and deals in words as large and sonorous as though uttered by the great Doctor Samuel Johnson. As a matter of fact, it is the production of John Filson, the first historian of Kentucky and one of the pioneers of Cincinnati. Filson was a schoolmaster, quite devoid of humor, and with a strong penchant for learned phrases. In setting down the story of Boone's life, as related to him by the great hunter, he made the latter talk in the first person, in a stilted manner quite foreign to the hardy but unlettered folk of whom Boone was a type. Wherever Boone's memory failed, Filson appears to have filled in the gaps from tradition and his own imagination; thus the autobiography is often wrong as to facts, and possesses but minor value as historical material. The little book was, however, widely circulated both at home and abroad, and gave Boone a notoriety excelled by few men of his day. Some years later Byron wrote some indifferent lines upon "General Boone of Kentucky;" the public journals of the time had accounts of his prowess, often grossly exaggerated; and English travelers into the interior of America eagerly sought the hero and told of him in their books.