170 The Winning of the West 



the forest was open and composed of huge trees; 

 elsewhere it was of thicker, smaller growth. 16 

 Everywhere game abounded, and it was nowhere 

 very wary. 



Other hunters of whom we know even the 

 names of only a few had been through many parts 

 of the wilderness before Boone, and earlier still 

 Frenchmen had built forts and smelting furnaces 

 on the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the head 

 tributaries of the Kentucky. 17 Boone is interesting 

 as a leader and explorer ; but he is still more interest- 

 ing as a type. The West was neither discovered, 

 won, nor settled by any single man. No keen-eyed 

 statesman planned the movement, nor was it car- 

 ried out by any great military leader; it was the 

 work of a whole people, of whom each man was im- 

 pelled mainly by sheer love of adventure ; it was the 

 outcome of the ceaseless strivings of all the daunt- 

 less, restless backwoods folk to win homes for their 

 descendants and to each penetrate deeper than his 

 neighbors into the remote forest hunting-grounds 

 where the perilous pleasures of the chase and of war 



16 MS. diary of Benj. Hawkins, 1796. Preserved in Nash. 

 Historical Soc. In 1796 buffalo were scarce; but some fresh 

 signs of them were still seen at licks. 



17 Haywood, p. 75, etc. It is a waste of time to quarrel 

 over who first discovered a particular tract of this wilder- 

 ness. A great many hunters traversed different parts at dif- 

 ferent times, from 1760 on, each practically exploring on his 

 own account. We do not know the names of most of them ; 

 those we do know are only worth preserving in county his- 

 tories and the like; the credit belongs to the race, not the 

 individual. 



