The British were still in the dark as to the exact neighborhood from which their foes--the "swarm of backwoodsmen," as Tarleton called them [Footnote: "Tarleton's Campaigns," p. 169.]--really came. It was generally supposed that they were in part from Kentucky, and that Boon himself was among the number. [Footnote: British historians to the present day repeat this. Even Lecky, in his "History of England," speaks of the backwoodsmen as in part from Kentucky. Having pointed out this trivial fault in Lecky's work, it would be ungracious not to allude to the general justice and impartiality of its accounts of these revolutionary campaigns--they are very much more trustworthy than Bancroft's, for instance. Lecky scarcely gives the right color to the struggle in the south; but when Bancroft treats of it, it is not too much to say that he puts the contest between the whigs and the British and tories in a decidedly false light. Lecky fails to do justice to Washington's military ability, however; and overrates the French assistance.] However, Ferguson probably cared very little who they were; and keeping, as he supposed, a safe distance away from them, he halted at King's Mountain in South Carolina on the evening of October 6th, pitching his camp on a steep, narrow hill just south of the North Carolina boundary. The King's Mountain range itself is about sixteen miles in length, extending in a southwesterly course from one State into the other. The stony, half isolated ridge on which Ferguson camped was some six or seven hundred yards long and half as broad from base to base, or two thirds that distance on top. The steep sides were clad with a growth of open woods, including both saplings and big timber. Ferguson parked his baggage wagons along the northeastern part of the mountain. The next day he did not move; he was as near to the army of Cornwallis at Charlotte as to the mountaineers, and he thought it safe to remain where he was. He deemed the position one of great strength, as indeed it would have been, if assailed in the ordinary European fashion; and he was confident that even if the rebels attacked him, he could readily beat them back. But as General Lee, "Light-Horse Harry," afterwards remarked, the hill was much easier assaulted with the rifle than defended with the bayonet.