Richard Henderson stands out prominently as an honest leader of this army of conquerors. We can never read without a thrill the sentence in that letter of Daniel Boone's to Henderson in which the bold woodsman pleads the necessity of Henderson's hastening into Kentucky in 1775. All that Kentucky was and all that it did during the Revolution seems to have hung suspended on the advance of Richard Henderson's party through Cumberland Gap in that eventful April; and those words of the guide and trail-blazer, Boone, imploring that there be no delay, and emphasizing the stimulating effect that Henderson's advance would have on the various parties of explorers, have a ring of destiny in them. True, Virginia and North Carolina both repudiated Henderson's Indian purchase, and the promoter of historic Transylvania was decried and defamed; but his advance into the valley of the Kentucky gave an inspiration to the scattered parties of vagrant prospectors that resulted in making a permanent settlement in that key-stone State of the West, which was of untold advantage to the nation at large. And later Virginia and North Carolina made good the loss the founder of Transylvania had suffered because of their earlier repudiation. In Washington and Henderson we have two important factors in the advance of the pioneer army into the old Southwest--the region between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi south of the Ohio River. [Illustration: DANIEL BOONE] Turning to the rich empire lying north of that river, a chapter belongs to that resolute herald of religious and social betterment, David Zeisberger, who led his faithful Moravians from Pennsylvania to found an ideal settlement in central Ohio. The marvellous story of the indomitable Catholic missionaries in America has been receiving something of its share of attention by the reading world, a story so noble and inspiring that it is one of the precious heritages of the past; that of the equally noble Protestant missionaries in the Middle and Far West has not yet received its due. The Moravian Brethren received the first acre of land ever legally owned by white men in Ohio. Here, in "the Meadow of Light" on the Tuscarawas River, Zeisberger and his noble comrade, John Heckewelder, attempted to found a civilized colony of Christian Indians. But for the Revolution, he would doubtless have succeeded. The story of his temporary success is of great romantic interest and of moment especially by way of comparison. A legal right to land was secured by this migrating colony of Indians under the leadership of white missionaries; it was to be, to all intents and purposes, a white man's settlement, and agriculture was to be the colony's means of support. Laws and rules of conduct were formulated, and for five interesting years a great degree of success attended the effort. Then came war, despoliation, and a thrilling period of wandering. But never was the fact of legal ownership ignored;