There were, however, a few very necessary articles for which the settlers had to depend upon the outside world. These were salt, iron, powder and lead. In the fall the members of a settlement would make a joint collection of fur-skins and send two or three of their number to some large town, such as Baltimore, to get what was needed. Thus, a train of several peltry-laden horses would make the long, slow journey over a distance which we may cover in these days in two or three hours. Daniel Boone was a typical backwoodsman. Born in a frontier settlement, he passed his long and adventurous life in sparsely-peopled regions and died in a pioneer community beyond the Mississippi. Boone’s father, a native of England, after living in different parts of Pennsylvania, took up some land on what was then the frontier, in Oley township, about eight miles from the site of the present city of Reading. Here Daniel was born in November, 1734. His early life was that of the ordinary backwoods boy. It embraced no considerable opportunity for scholarship. He learned to read and write but, having little occasion in the course of his active life for the exercise of either accomplishment, his spelling was poor to the day of his death. He helped his mother with the chores and, when old enough, was entrusted with the care of the stock at pasture. His days were spent in the open and he grew to be a lusty lad, well versed in nature and the ways of wild beasts and the less dangerous denizens of the forest. When he had reached the age of twelve, his father gave him a rifle, with which he soon became a good shot and furnished his mother’s kitchen with an ample supply of game. His winters were now spent in hunting, and he often roamed long distances from home in his solitary expeditions, returning with skins secured by his trap or gun. In 1750 Boone’s parents with their children migrated south and settled on the banks of the upper Yadkin, in the northwestern corner of North Carolina. The location was even wilder than that they had left, and their lives were harder and more adventurous. Attacks by the Indians were not infrequent, and a few years later a border war cost many lives in the Yadkin Valley. Here Daniel, following the custom of young backwoodsmen, married as soon as he had arrived at manhood and set up housekeeping in a log cabin.