waters of numerous rivers, some of which, according to the tilt of the land, flow eastward and southeastward toward the Atlantic, and others westward and southwestward toward the Ohio. This is one of the fairest and most salubrious regions in America; but they did not again stop until the promised land of the Yadkin was reached.

The country was before them, to choose from it practically what they would. Between the Yadkin and the Catawba there was a broad expanse of elevated prairie, yielding a luxuriant growth of grass, while the bottoms skirting the numerous streams were thick-grown to canebrake. Here were abundant meadows for the cattle, fish and game and wild fruits in quantity quite exceeding young Daniel's previous experience, a well-tempered climate, and to the westward a mountain-range which cast long afternoon shadows over the plain and spoke eloquently of untamed dominions beyond. Out of this land of plenty Squire Boone chose a claim at Buffalo Lick, where Dutchman's Creek joins with the North Fork of Yadkin.

Daniel was now a lad of eighteen. Nominally, he helped in the working of his father's farm and in the family smithy; actually, he was more often in the woods with his long rifle. At first, buffaloes were so plenty that a party of three or four men, with dogs, could kill from ten to twenty in a day; but soon the sluggish animals receded before the advance of white men, hiding themselves behind the mountain wall. An ordinary hunter could slaughter four or five deer in a day; in the autumn, he might from sunrise to sunset shoot enough bears to provide over a ton of bear-bacon for winter use; wild turkeys were easy prey; beavers, otters, and muskrats abounded; while wolves, panthers, and wildcats overran the country. Overcome by his passion for the chase, our young Nimrod soon began to spend months at a time in the woods, especially in autumn and winter. He found also more profit in this occupation than at either the forge or the plow; for at their nearest market town, Salisbury, twenty miles away, good prices were paid for skins, which were regularly shipped thence to the towns upon the Atlantic coast.

The Catawba Indians lived about sixty miles distant, and the Cherokees still farther. These tribesmen not infrequently visited the thinly scattered settlement on the Yadkin, seeking trade with the whites, with whom they were as yet on good terms. They were, however, now and then raided by Northern Indians, particularly the Shawnese, who, collecting in the Valley of Virginia, swept down upon them with fury; sometimes also committing depredations upon the whites who had befriended their tribal enemies, and who unfortunately had staked their farms in the old-time war-path of the marauders.

In the year 1754, the entire American border, from the Yadkin to the St. Lawrence, became deeply concerned in the Indian question. France and England had long been rivals for the mastery of the North American continent lying west of the Alleghanies. France had established a weak chain of posts upon the upper Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, thus connecting Canada with Louisiana. In the Valley of the Ohio, however, without which the French could not long hold the Western country, there was a protracted rivalry between French and English fur-traders, each seeking to supplant the intruding foreigner. This led to the outbreak of the French and Indian War, which was waged vigorously for five years, until New France fell, and the English obtained control of all Canada and that portion of the continent lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi.

As early as 1748, backwoodsmen from Pennsylvania had made a small settlement on New River, just west of the Alleghanies—a settlement which the Boones must have visited, as it lay upon the road to the Yadkin; and in the same season several adventurous Virginians hunted and made land-claims in Kentucky and Tennessee. In the following year there was formed for Western fur trading and colonizing purposes, the Ohio Company, composed of wealthy Virginians, among them two brothers of George Washington. In 1753 French soldiers built a little log fort on French Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany; and, despite Virginia's protest, delivered by young Major Washington, were planning to erect another at the forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburg now is. Thither Washington went, in the succeeding year, with a body of Virginia militiamen, to construct an English stockade at the forks; but the French defeated him in the Great Meadows hard by and themselves erected the fort. It is thought by some writers that young Boone, then twenty years of age, served in the Pennsylvania militia which protected the frontier from the Indian forays which succeeded this episode. A year later (1755) the inexperienced General Braddock, fresh from England, set out, with Washington upon his staff, to teach a lesson to these Frenchmen who had intruded upon land claimed by the colony of Virginia.

In Braddock's little army were a hundred North Carolina frontiersmen, under Captain Hugh Waddell; their wagoner and blacksmith was Daniel Boone. His was one of those heavily laden baggage-wagons which, history tells us, greatly impeded the progress of the English, and contributed not a little to the terrible disaster which overtook the column in the ravine of Turtle Creek, only a few miles from Pittsburg. The baggage-train was the center of a fierce attack from Indians, led by French officers, and many drivers were killed. Young Boone, however, cut the traces of his team, and mounting a horse, fortunately escaped by flight. Behind him the Indian allies of the French, now unchecked, laid waste the panic-stricken frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia. But the Yadkin, which Boone soon reached, was as yet unscarred; the Northern tribes were busied in the tide of intercolonial warfare, and the Catawbas and Cherokees thus far remained steadfast to their old-time promises of peace.

Daniel was now a man, full-grown. He had brought home with him not only some knowledge of what war meant, but his imagination had become heated by a new passion—the desire to explore as well as to hunt. While upon the campaign he had fallen in with another adventurous soul, John Finley by name, who fired his heart with strange tales of lands and game to the west of the mountains. Finley was a Scotch-Irishman of roving tendencies, who had emigrated to Pennsylvania and joined a colony of his compatriots. As early as 1752 he had become a fur-trader. In the course of his rambles many perilous adventures befell him in the Kentucky wilds, into which he had penetrated as far as the Falls of the Ohio, where Louisville is now built. Hurrying, with other woodsmen, to Braddock's support, he enrolled himself under George Croghan, a famous trader to the Indians. But the expert services of Croghan and his men, who, well understanding the methods of savages upon the war-path, offered to serve as scouts, were coldly rejected by Braddock, who soon had occasion to regret that he had not taken their advice.

Finley found in the Yadkin wagoner a kindred spirit, and suggested to him with eagerness a method of reaching Kentucky by following the trail of the buffaloes and the Shawnese, northwestward through Cumberland Gap. To reach this hunter's paradise, to which Finley had pointed the way, was now Boone's daily dream.

CHAPTER III
LIFE ON THE BORDER

It was many years before Daniel Boone realized his dream of reaching Kentucky. Such an expedition into the far-off wilderness could not be lightly undertaken; its