When Boone was about sixteen years old his family decided to move. They went along the Great Valley, as many were doing in those days, crossed the Potomac, and traveled far through the valley of Virginia. Then they turned east, crossed the Blue Ridge, and made a home in the valley of the Yadkin river in North Carolina. They were thus east of the mountains, and across, to the west, was the Watauga Settlement. While his home was in North Carolina Boone had an experience which helped him to be a rugged pioneer, for he went up to Virginia and across the mountains with General Braddock, serving as wagoner and blacksmith. He found himself in dangerous quarters in the battle, where many of the teamsters were shot, but he managed to cut his horses loose, mounted one of them, and escaped. On this expedition he made friends with John Finley, and together they planned to go at some future time to Kentucky by the Cumberland Gap and enjoy the fine hunting in the forests of the West. Finley had already made a journey down to the falls of the Ohio river. At home Boone lived, like all others in those valleys, in a small log cabin chinked with clay and warmed by a large fireplace, in which, says his biographer, “the young wife (for Boone was now married) cooked simple meals of corn mush, pumpkins, squashes, beans, potatoes, and pork, or wild meat of many kinds.” Boone spent his time in farming, working at the forge, and hunting; but he liked hunting best, and was never so happy as in the thick forest alone with his gun. He often went on long hunting trips, returning with bear’s meat, venison, bear’s oil, and furs, the last to be sold for other things needed at home. [Illustration: FIG. 56. PINEVILLE GAP, WHERE THE CUMBERLAND RIVER PASSES PINEVILLE MOUNTAIN A FEW MILES BEYOND CUMBERLAND GAP] In 1767 Boone and one or two friends made a hunting tour into Kentucky, though they did not know they were so far west as that. As they were kept there by heavy snows, they camped at a “salt lick” and lived by shooting the buffaloes and other animals that came to get the salt. The hunters returned to their homes in the spring and did not go out until 1769. Meantime John Finley was peddling in that south land, and one day surprised Boone, and himself, too, by knocking at the door of Boone’s cabin. He made the hardy pioneer a long visit, and in the spring, having talked it all over many times, they set out for Kentucky. They crossed the Blue Ridge and the Great Valley and came to Cumberland Gap. This was Boone’s first journey to the great pass. It is pleasant now to stand in the gap at the top of the pass and think of the time when Boone with his hunting friends made their way up from the east and went happily down through the woods to the strange country on the west.