CHAPTER VI 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS ; AND THEIR HUNT- 

 ING IN NO-MAN'S-LAND 

 1769-1774 



THE American backwoodsmen had surged up, 

 wave upon wave, till their mass trembled in 

 the troughs of the Alleghanies, ready to flood the 

 continent beyond. The people threatened by them 

 were dimly conscious of the danger which as yet 

 only loomed in the distance. Far off, among their 

 quiet adobe villages, in the sun-scorched lands by the 

 Rio Grande, the slow Indo-Iberian peons and their 

 monkish masters still walked in the tranquil steps 

 of their fathers, ignorant of the growth of the power 

 that was tooverwhelm their children and successors ; 

 but nearer by, Spaniard and Creole Frenchman, Al- 

 gonquin and Appalachian, were all uneasy as they 

 began to feel the first faint pressure of the American 

 advance. 



As yet they had been shielded by the forest which 

 lay over the land like an unrent mantle. All through 

 the mountains, and far beyond, it stretched without 

 a break ; but toward the mouth of the Kentucky and 

 Cumberland rivers the landscape became varied 

 with open groves of woodland, with flower-strewn 

 glades and great barrens or prairies of long grass. 

 This region, one of the fairest in the world, was the 

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