"Daniel Boone, and those who accompanied him into the wildernesses of Kentucky, had been little more than hunters in their original homes, on the frontiers of North Carolina; and, with the exception of their leader, but little more than hunters did they continue after their emigration. The most glowing accounts of the beauty and fertility of the country northwest of the Laurel Ridge, had reached their ears from Finley and his companions; and they shouldered their guns, strapped their wallets upon their backs and wandered through the Cumberland Gap into the dense forests, and thick brakes, and beautiful plains which soon opened upon their visions, more to indulge a habit of roving, and gratify an excited curiosity, than from any other motive; and, arrived upon the head-waters of the Kentucky, they built themselves rude log cabins, and spent most of their lives in hunting and eating, and fighting marauding bands of Indians. Of a similar character were the earliest Virginians, who penetrated these wildernesses. The very first, indeed, who wandered from the parent State over the Laurel Ridge, down into the unknown regions on its northwest, came avowedly as hunters and trappers; and such of them as escaped the tomahawk of the Indian, with very few exceptions, remained hunters and trappers till their deaths. "But this first class of pioneers was not either numerous enough, or influential enough, to stamp its character upon the after-coming hundreds; and the second class of immigrants into Kentucky was composed of very different materials. Small farmers from North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, for the most part, constituted this; and these daring adventurers brought with them intelligent and aspiring minds, industrious and persevering habits, a few of the comforts of civilized life, and some of the implements of husbandry. A number of them were men who had received the rudiments of an English education, and not a few of them had been reared up in the spirit, and a sincere observance of the forms, of religious worship. Many, perhaps most of them, were from the frontier settlements of the States named; and these combined the habits of the hunter and agriculturist, and possessed, with no inconsiderable knowledge of partially refined life, all that boldness and energy, which subsequently became so distinctive a trait of the character of the early settlers.