Daniel Boone: The Pioneer of KentuckyAbbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
History
Daniel Boone: The Pioneer of Kentucky
Abbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
Boone, Daniel, 1734-1820
Colonel Boone seems to have been very happy in his new home. He still
enjoyed his favorite pursuit of hunting, for the forests around him were
filled with game and with animals whose rich furs were every year
becoming more valuable. The distinguished naturalist, J. J. Audubon,
visited him in his solitary retreat, and spent a night with him. In his
Ornithological Biography he gives the following narrative which he
received from Boone, that evening as they sat at the cabin fire. We give
the story in the words of the narrator:
"Daniel Boone, or as he was usually called in the Western country,
Colonel Boone, happened to spend a night with me under the same roof,
more than twenty years ago. We had returned from a shooting excursion,
in the course of which his extraordinary skill in the management of the
rifle had been fully displayed. On retiring to the room appropriated to
that remarkable individual and myself for the night, I felt anxious to
know more of his exploits and adventures than I did, and accordingly
took the liberty of proposing numerous questions to him.
"The stature and general appearance of this wanderer of the western
forests approached the gigantic. His chest was broad and prominent, his
muscular powers displayed themselves in every limb; his countenance gave
indication of his great courage, enterprise and perseverance; and when
he spoke the very motion of his lips brought the impression that
whatever he uttered could not be otherwise than strictly true. I
undressed while he merely took off his hunting shirt and arranged a few
folds of blankets on the floor, choosing rather to lie there, as he
observed, than on the softest bed. When we had both disposed of
ourselves each after his own fashion, he related to me the following
account of his powers of memory, which I lay before your kind reader in
his own words, hoping that the simplicity of his style may prove
interesting to you:
"'I was once,' said he, 'on a hunting expedition on the banks of the
Green River, when the lower parts of Kentucky were still in the hands of
nature, and none but the sons of the soil were looked upon as its lawful
proprietors. We Virginians had for some time been waging a war of
intrusion upon them, and I among the rest rambled through the woods in
pursuit of their race, as I now would follow the tracks of any ravenous
animal. The Indians outwitted me one dark night, and I was as
unexpectedly as suddenly made a prisoner by them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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