The First White Man of the West: Life and Exploits of Col. Dan'l. Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky;; Interspersed with Incidents in the Early Annals of the Country.Flint, Timothy
History
The First White Man of the West: Life and Exploits of Col. Dan'l. Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky;; Interspersed with Incidents in the Early Annals of the Country.
They were in want of many things. Clothing and moccasins they might
supply. With bread, sugar, and salt, though articles of the first
necessity, they could dispense. But ammunition, an article absolutely
indispensable, was failing them. They concluded, too, that horses would
be of essential service to them. They finally came to the resolution
that the elder Boone should return to North Carolina, and come out to
the new country with ammunition, horses, and supplies.
The character of Daniel Boone, in consenting to be left alone in that
wilderness, surrounded by perils from the Indians and wild beasts, of
which he had so recently and terribly been made aware, appears in its
true light. We have heard of a Robinson Crusoe made so by the necessity
of shipwreck; but all history can scarcely parallel another such an
instance of a man voluntarily consenting to be left alone among savages
and wild beasts, seven hundred miles from the nearest white inhabitant.
The separation came. The elder brother disappeared in the forest, and
Daniel Boone was left in the cabin, so recently cheered by the presence
of his brother, entirely alone. Their only dog followed the departing
brother, and Boone had nothing but his unconquerable spirit to sustain
him during the long and lonely days and nights, visited by the
remembrance of his distant wife and children.
To prevent the recurrence of dark and lonely thoughts, he set out, soon
after his brother left him, on a distant excursion to the north-west.
The country grew still more charming under his eye at every step of his
advance. He wandered through the delightful country of the Barrens, and
gained the heights of one of the ridges of Salt river, whence he could
look back on the Alleghany ridges, lifting their blue heads in the
direction of the country of his wife and children. Before him rolled the
majestic Ohio, down its dark forests, and seen by him for the first
time. It may be imagined what thoughts came over his mind, as the lonely
hunter stood on the shore of this mighty stream, straining his thoughts
towards its sources, and the unknown country where it discharged itself
into some other river, or the sea. During this journey he explored the
country on the south shore of the Ohio, between the Cumberland and the
present site of Louisville, experiencing in these lonely explorations a
strange pleasure, which, probably, none but those of his temperament can
adequately imagine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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