Still he was continually busy, engaged in innumerable acts of kindness for his neighbors and his friends. He could repair rifles, make and carve powder horns of great beauty, and could fashion moccasins and snowshoes of the most approved patterns. His love for the solitude of the wilderness, and for the excitement of the hunter's life, continued unabated to the last. He loved to cut tender slices of venison, and to toast them upon the end of his ramrod over the glaring coals of his cabin fire, finding in that repast a treat more delicious than any gourmand ever yet experienced in the viands of the most costly restaurants of the Palais Royal, or the Boulevard. Upon one occasion he could not resist the impulse of again going hunting, though in the eighty-second year of his age. Exacting from his friends the promise that should he die, his remains should be brought back and buried by the side of those of his wife, he took a boy with him and went to the mouth of the Kansas River, where he remained two weeks. Returning from this, his last expedition, he visited his youngest son, Major Nathan Boone, who had reared a comfortable stone house in that remote region, to which emigrants were now rapidly moving. Here he died after an illness of but three days, on the 26th day of September, 1820. He was then eighty-six years of age. Soon after the death of his wife, Colonel Boone made his own coffin, which he kept under his bed awaiting the day of his burial. In this coffin he was buried by the side of his wife. Missouri, though very different from the Missouri of the present day, was no longer an unpeopled wilderness. The Indians had retired; thousands of emigrants had flocked to its fertile plains, and many thriving settlements had sprung up along the banks of its magnificent streams. The great respect with which Colonel Boone was regarded by his fellow-citizens, was manifest in the large numbers who were assembled at his burial. The Legislature of Missouri, which chanced then to be in session, adjourned for one day, in respect for his memory, and passed a resolve that all the members should wear a badge of mourning for twenty days. This was the first Legislature of the new State.