A child of the wilderness, Boone was law-abiding and loved peace, but he chafed at legal forms. He had, in various parts of Kentucky, preempted much land in the crude fashion of his day, both under the Transylvania Company and the later statutes of Virginia--how much, it would now be difficult to ascertain. In his old survey-books, still preserved in the Wisconsin State Historical Library, one finds numerous claim entries for himself, ranging from four hundred to ten thousand acres each--a tract which he called "Stockfield," near Boonesborough; on Cartwright's Creek, a branch of Beech Fork of Salt River; on the Licking, Elkhorn, Boone's Creek, and elsewhere. The following is a specimen entry, dated "Aperel the 22 1785," recording a claim made "on the Bank of Cantuckey"; it illustrates the loose surveying methods of the time: "Survayd for Dal Boone 5000 acres begin at Robert Camels N E Corner at 2 White ashes and Buckeyes S 1200 p[oles] to 3 Shuger trees Ealm and walnut E 666 p to 6 Shuger trees and ash N 1200 p to a poplar and beech W 666 p to the begining." It did not occur to our easy-going hero that any one would question his right to as much land as he cared to hold in a wilderness which he had done so much to bring to the attention of the world. But claim-jumpers were no respecters of persons. It was discovered that Boone had carelessly failed to make any of his preemptions according to the letter of the law, leaving it open for any adventurer to reenter the choice claims which he had selected with the care of an expert, and to treat him as an interloper. Suits of ejectment followed one by one (1785-98), until in the end his acres were taken from him by the courts, and the good-hearted, simple fellow was sent adrift in the world absolutely landless. At first, when his broad acres began to melt away, the great hunter, careless of his possessions, appeared to exhibit no concern; but the accumulation of his disasters, together with the rapid growth of settlement upon the hunting-grounds, and doubtless some domestic nagging, developed within him an intensity of depression which led him to abandon his long-beloved Kentucky and vow never again to dwell within her limits. In the autumn of 1788, before his disasters were quite complete, this resolution was carried into effect; with wife and family, and what few worldly goods he possessed, he removed to Point Pleasant, at the junction of the Great Kanawha and the Ohio--in our day a quaint little court-house town in West Virginia. CHAPTER XIV IN THE KANAWHA VALLEY