"This was one of the most beautiful and blooming territories over which a wild luxuriant forest ever waved.--And yet as it was a sort of dividing line between the northern and southern Indians, it became the battle-ground upon which these nations met and waged interminable wars, so that it went among the savages by the name of the _dark and bloody land_. Near the close of the revolutionary war several settlements were attempted in Kentucky by emigrants from Virginia. My ancestors were among the number. The Indians both from the south and north, almost immediately became jealous of these white settlers, and adopted the purpose of exterminating them. The settlers were able to keep their position only by building a fort and living in it. While a certain portion of the men worked in attempting to clear and cultivate the land, another portion being armed, were on watch. I was born in one of these forts near Boonsborough. I wore, till I was twelve years old, hose made of buffalo hair. Our chief living was upon bear and buffalo meat. We were in the midst of the wildness of nature. Hundreds of times have I seen the Indians rushing upon our fort, or fleeing before the sharp-speaking guns of our friends. People who live in the densely settled portions of our country, know very little about the toils and dangers, the sacrifices and privations which the first settlers endure." My Kentucky acquaintance illustrated this last remark by a vast number of thrilling incidents, one or two of which I will relate. When he was quite young, several of the people of that settlement, undertook to manufacture maple sugar. The winter had relaxed its rigours, and the warm sun began to pour down his genial rays. The snow was fast melting away, and the sap ran merrily from the perforated sugar trees. Several negroes were engaged a short distance from the fort in collecting the sap. It was supposed that no Indians were in the neighbourhood, as none had been seen for several months. Tempted by the bright sunny day, a daughter of one of the settlers, a young, beautiful, blooming girl, rambled beyond the enclosures of the fort, where the negroes were collecting the sugar sap. While she stood there, full of buoyancy and free from every apprehension, a negro being near, busily engaged in some of the various processes of sugar-making, four or five wild Indians in a moment sprung upon them! The negro they seized and bound, and in an instant cut down with their tomahawks this beautiful girl. Having scalped her, they fled, carrying with them the captured negro. The alarm was soon given at the fort. They were pursued--overtaken, and several of them shot. The negro was rescued. Those that had escaped went five hundred miles around among the tribe to raise the war-cry, and then came back and again attacked the settlement. In that encounter my Kentucky friend told me that _eleven_ of his family relatives were killed.