It was on a day in August, when Davy was six years old, that his father and his uncle took him with them on a hunting trip into the dark forests of pine on the northern slopes of the Bald Mountains. They were gone but a single day, but every moment was a revelation to the little fellow. They were looking for wild turkeys, and had bagged several when they came to an opening surrounded by maples, beeches, and other deciduous trees. The grass was fresh, and a dozen sorts of flowers were under their feet as they tied their single horse, on which Davy rode with the game. The men were talking of the West, and as they pointed out across the peaceful land of the Chickasaws, the boy heard often the names of the great rivers, the Tennessee, the Holston, the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the Mississippi. The spirit of unrest that was in their hearts was already in his own, and from that day the Nolichucky was no longer satisfying to him; he wanted something bigger. In the faint echoes of ringing steel and bloody threats that came from the cities of the Old World, those August days, there was somewhat that excited the natural restlessness of the pioneer. The events in France were terrible and momentous. On the 20th of the month before, the “black-browed Marseillaise,” the Reds of the Midi, had finished their long march from the shores of the Mediterranean, and had entered Paris, six hundred strong, armed with forks and scythes and pikes, and singing the song of Rouget de Lisle that forever afterwards was to be the War Hymn of Unrest. The few who had left for the New World had not been missed in the ranks of the starving people of Europe’s overcrowded streets and lands. The “black chaos of insurrection” had burst upon the last defenses of the French king, and it may have been while the three looked westward to the promised land that the Swiss Guards――hunted like wild beasts――died to the last man in the Place de Grêve. The time for blood-letting had come to France, and the whole world was in a ferment that was soon to set the red men of America in battle against the aggressions of the colonists. There could never have been peace in the Old World until the opening of the New, and that also meant war to the knife. From then until he went forth into the strange places of the east, Davy grew in thought and stature and in the knowledge of common things, but without any education other than that obtained by the use of sharp ears and keen sight. When he was seven or more, the whole Crockett family moved to a place about ten miles north of Greenville. From the habit John Crockett had, of going from one place to another, it seems that he depended mostly upon game and pelts for a living. He could not have been much of a farmer, in a country where land had to be cleared before crops could be raised.