Though it was necessary to practice the extreme of caution, to avoid capture by the Indians, our adventurers do not seem to have been annoyed in the slightest degree with any painful fears on that account. Each morning they carefully scanned the horizon, to see if anywhere there could be seen the smoke of the camp-fire curling up from the open prairie or from the forest. Through the day they were ever on the alert, examining the trails which they occasionally passed, to see if there were any fresh foot prints, or other indications of the recent presence of their foe. At night, before venturing to kindle their own camp-fire, they looked cautiously in every direction, to see if a gleam from an Indian encampment could anywhere be seen. Thus from the first of August to the ensuing month of March, these two bold men traversed, for many hundred miles, an unknown country, filled with wandering hunting bands of hostile Indians, and yet avoided capture or detection. If a storm arose, they would rear their cabin in some secluded dell, and basking in the warmth of their camp-fire wait until the returning sun invited them to resume their journey. Or if they came to some of nature's favored haunts, where Eden-like attractions were spread around them, on the borders of the lake, by the banks of the stream, or beneath the brow of the mountain, they would tarry for a few days, reveling in delights, which they both had the taste to appreciate. In this way, they very thoroughly explored the upper valley of the Cumberland river. For some reason not given, they preferred to return north several hundred miles to the Kentucky river, as the seat of their contemplated settlement. The head waters of this stream are near those of the Cumberland. It however flows through the very heart of Kentucky, till it enters the Ohio river, midway between the present cities of Cincinnati and Louisville. It was in the month of March that they reached the Kentucky river on their return. For some time they wandered along its banks searching for the more suitable situation for the location of a colony. "The exemption of these men," said W. H. Bogart, "from assault by the Indians during all this long period of seven months, in which, armed and on horseback, they seem to have roamed just where they chose, is most wonderful. It has something about it which seems like a special interposition of Providence, beyond the ordinary guardianship over the progress of man. On the safety of these men rested the hope of a nation. A very distinguished authority has declared, that without Boone, the settlements could not have been upheld and the conquest of Kentucky would have been reserved for the emigrants of the nineteenth century."