Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 161 



But their accounts excited no more than a passing 

 interest; they came and went without comment, as 

 lonely stragglers had come and gone for nearly a 

 century. The backwoods civilization crept slowly 

 westward without being influenced in its move- 

 ments by their explorations. 5 



Finally, however, among these hunters one arose 

 whose wanderings were to bear fruit ; who was des- 

 tined to lead through the wilderness the first body of 

 settlers that ever established a community in the far 

 West, completely cut off from the seaboard colonies. 

 This was Daniel Boone. He was born in Pennsyl- 

 vania in I/34, 6 but when only a boy had been 

 brought with the rest of his family to the banks of 

 the Yadkin in North Carolina. Here he grew up, 



South Carolina were near the present site of Nashville in 

 1767; in the same year John Finley and others were in Ken- 

 tucky ; and it was Finley who first told Boone about it and 

 led him thither. 



5 The attempt to find out the names of the men who first 

 saw the different portions of the western country is not very 

 profitable. The first visitors were hunters, simply wander- 

 ing in search of game, not with any settled purpose of ex- 

 ploration. Who the individual first-comers were, has gen- 

 erally been forgotten. At the most it is only possible to 

 find out the name of some one of several who went to a 

 given locality. The hunters were wandering everywhere. 

 By chance some went to places we now consider important. 

 By chance the names of a few of these have been preserved. 

 But the credit belongs to the whole backwoods race, not to 

 the individual backwoodsman. 



6 August 22, 1734 (according to James Parton, in his sketch 

 of Boone). His grandfather was an English immigrant; his 

 father had married a Quakeress. When he lived on the 

 banks of the Delaware, the country was still a wilderness. 

 He was born in Berks Co. 



