As to personal description, Boone was neither a tall nor a thin man. He was not angular nor bony. His frame was covered not with cloying fat but with firm and easily playing muscles, and he carried none of the useless tissue of the man of civilization. His weight was “about one hundred and seventy-five pounds.” Audubon, who met him late in his life, says: “He approached the gigantic in stature. His chest was broad and prominent, and his muscular powers were visible in every limb. His countenance gave indication of his great courage, enterprise and perseverance.” Yet in person Boone did not quite reach the six-foot mark, but was just below five feet and ten inches in stature, some say five feet eight inches, being therefore of exactly that build which good judges of men esteem to be most desirable for combined strength, activity and endurance. He was rather broad shouldered: that is to say, his shoulders nicely overhung his hips. All agree that he was of “robust and powerful proportions.” One historian speaks of his “piercing hazel eye”; yet this is but romancing. Most portraits of Daniel Boone are the products of imagination. The most authentic, perhaps the only authentic portrait of him, is that painted in 1820 by Chester Harding, “who,” says an early writer, “of American artists is the one most celebrated for his likenesses.” When Harding made his portrait of Boone, the latter was very feeble, and had to be supported during the sittings. This portrait shows a face thin and pale, with hair of snowy whiteness and eye “bright blue, mild and pleasant.” This blue eye is of the best color in all the world for keenness of vision, for quickness and accuracy with the rifle. The Harding portrait does not show the square chin that some writers give to Boone; and certainly it portrays no ferocious looking ruffian, but a man mild, gentle and contemplative, “not frivolous, thoughtless or agitated.” As to Boone’s appearance early in life, we must to some extent join the others who imagine or presume. It is fair to suppose that in complexion he was florid, with the clear skin, sometimes marked with freckles, that you may see to-day in the mountains of the Cumberland, in parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, sometimes in North Carolina and Mississippi. The color of his hair was never that of “raven blackness.” Perhaps it was brown, but not a finely filamented brown. It was more likely blond, and perhaps indeed carried a shade of red. Certainly the ends of his hair were bleached a tawny yellow, that splendid yellow that you may see even to-day in the hair and beard and mustaches of the outdoor men of the American West. In his younger days he often wore the half savage garb of the early American hunters—the buckskin or linsey hunting shirt, the fringed leggings of the same material, with moccasins made of the skin of the deer or buffalo. His hat was as chance would have it. Perhaps sometimes he wore a cap of fur.