164 The Winning of the West 



in all who met him, 9 so that the men of means and 

 influence were willing to trust adventurous enter- 

 prises to his care ; and his success as an explorer, his 

 skill as a hunter, and his prowess as an Indian fight- 

 er enabled him to bring these enterprises to a suc- 

 cessful conclusion, and in some degree to control the 

 wild spirits associated with him. 



Boone's expeditions into the edges of the wilder- 

 ness whetted his appetite for the unknown. He 

 had heard of great hunting-grounds in the far inte- 

 rior from a stray hunter and Indian trader, 10 who 

 had himself seen them, and on May i, 1769, he left 

 his home on the Yadkin "to wander through the wil- 

 derness of America in quest of the country of Ken- 

 tucky." 11 He was accompanied by five other men, 

 including his informant, and struck out toward the 

 Northwest, through the tangled mass of rugged 

 mountains and gloomy forests. During five weeks 

 of severe toil the little band journeyed through vast 

 solitudes, whose utter loneliness can with difficulty 

 be understood by those who have not themselves 



9 Even among his foes; he is almost the only American 

 praised by Lt.-Gov. Henry Hamilton of Detroit, for instance 

 (see "Royal Gazette," July 15, 1780). 



10 John Finley. 



11 "The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, formerly a 

 hunter"; nominally written by Boone himself, in 1784, but 

 in reality by John Filson, the first Kentucky historian a 

 man who did history good service, albeit a r true sample of 

 the small hedge-school pedant. The old pioneer's own lan- 

 guage would have been far better than that which Filson 

 used ; for the latter's composition is a travesty of Johnsonese 

 in its most aggravated form. For Filson see Durrett's ad- 

 mirable "Life" in the Filson Club Publications. 



