Scarcely less sublime than Columbus pacing the deck of his ship at sea and looking wistfully westward in search of the new world he so faithfully sought, seems Daniel Boone, in 1769, venturing forth from the quiet valleys of the Yadkin in response to the promptings of his restless spirit, unconsciously going to prepare the way for the millions that were subsequently to follow him, and as if by magic to transform into fertile fields the pathless forests beyond the Alleghanies which he was the first to penetrate and explore. [Illustration: DANIEL BOONE. FROM A PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF COL. R. T. DURRETT, LOUISVILLE, KY.] Dauntless, noble souls they were who created our commonwealth; and Byron, fascinated with the refreshing fame of Daniel Boone, which extended throughout Europe as well as America, celebrated him and his fellow Kentuckians in a number of fine stanzas in the eighth canto of _Don Juan_. Henry James, in his life of Hawthorne, laments the lack of historic inspiration for prose and verse in this country; yet Byron, sadly turning from the shams and hypocrisies of the Old World, which he scathingly satirized in his great production, burst into a beautiful strain of hope as he contemplated the uncorrupted heroes of the new world beyond the Atlantic. The description begins half humorously with the sixty-first stanza: “Of all men saving Sylla the man-slayer, Who passes for in life and death most lucky, Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, backwoodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest among mortals anywhere; For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he Enjoyed the lonely, vigorous, harmless days Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.” The reader cannot help smiling at the poet’s mistake in leaving off the final letter of Boone’s name and calling him “General,” when all Kentuckians, even including the illustrious pioneer, are “Colonels”; but the spirit of a master interpreter of Nature is in the stanzas that follow. [Illustration: GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. FROM A PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF COL. R. T. DURRETT, LOUISVILLE, KY.]