The pioneer was chosen to lead them. They turned their backs forever upon North Carolina in the autumn of 1775, and facing westward, set out for their destination. When they reached Powell's valley, several other families were awaiting them, and, thus re-enforced, the company numbered twenty-six men, four women, five boys and girls--quite a formidable force, when it is remembered they were under the leadership of Daniel Boone, to whom the trail had become so familiar during the preceding years. This little calvacade wound its way through Cumberland Gap, all in high spirits, though sensible of the dangers which, it may be said, hovered about them from the very hour they left Clinch River. Good fortune attended the venture, and for the first time of which we have record, the entire journey was made without the loss of any of their number at the hands of the Indians. Never forgetting that the utmost vigilance was necessary to insure this exemption, if such insurance be considered possible, Boone permitted nothing like negligence, either when on the march or in camp. But, in recalling those first expeditions to the West, one cannot help wondering at their success. Had the Indians shown a realizing sense of the strength in union, which they displayed at the battle of Point Pleasant, the Thames, and in the defeats of St. Clair, Crawford and others, they could have crushed out these attempts at settlement, and postponed the opening up of the country for many years. What more easy than to have concentrated several hundred of their warriors, and, waiting until the little companies of settlers had penetrated too far into their territory to withdraw, led them into ambush and annihilated every man, woman and child? But they chose, when not engaged in their rare movements on a large scale, to fight in a desultory fashion, firing from behind the tree or from the covert, or watching for the unsuspecting settler to appear at the door of his cabin. This manner of fighting made the feeling of uncertainty general, for no man could know when the peril threatened his wife and little ones, nor when the spiteful attack would be made by some small band of warriors, venturing from the main body and relying upon their own celerity of movement to escape before the settlers could rally in time to strike back. This species of warfare, we say, was extremely perilous to the settlers and pioneers, but it could never become an effective check to the advancing hosts of civilization, which were beginning to converge from a dozen different directions upon the fair forests and fertile plains of Kentucky.