Many of the early adventurers seem to have made their halting and rallying ground in North Carolina. Here were some of the men of Watauga, men who were to people Tennessee, men who were to discover and settle the grand state of Kentucky, that steadfast portion of our Western empire whose fidelity was to thwart all of those early efforts at Western sedition and secession that once threatened the unity of the American people. Having thus dealt in generalizations, we shall perhaps now do well to study some type, some product, of this early civilization, some character that shall indicate the general characteristics of the land and people of that early time. In this desire we fall naturally on the romantic yet pertinent story of that typical and historical frontiersman, Daniel Boone. Among the great sayings of great men there is one that rings like a trumpet voice through all the press of years. “Here stand I,” said Martin Luther. “Here I stand. I can not otherwise. God help me!” If we should come to comparisons, we might perhaps call Daniel Boone the Luther of frontiering, the evangel of adventure, the prophet of early west-bound daring. Certainly he was the most forward, the most present, the most instant man of his place and time. If we endeavor to see Daniel Boone, the man, as he actually was, we find ourselves at the outset dealing with a character already approaching the mythical in quality. Thus, in regard to his personality, certain folk imagine him as tall, thin, angular, uncouth. Others will portray to you a man with voice like thunder in the hills, with gore ever in his eye, in his voice perpetually the breathings of insatiate hate and rage. They will insist that Boone was bloody minded, overbearing, a man delighting in slaughters and riotings. Such pictures are utterly wrong; so much we may discover to be absolutely sure from the scant record of Boone’s real life. He was Quaker-bred, as we have seen. A sweeter soul than his we shall not find though we search all the pages of history. Meeting every species of danger, he remained undaunted. Meeting every manner of adversity, he remained unsoured. With every reason for conceit, he remained unbitten of any personal vanity. To the end of his life it was his belief that he was “an instrument ordained by Providence to settle the wilderness;” yet he lost no time in posing himself in any supposititious sainthood. Nor must we imagine him crude or ignorant in his simplicity, for those who knew him best state that he was “a man of ambition, shrewdness and energy, as well as of fine social qualities and an extreme sagacity.”