ijo The Winning of the West 



new States are formed the urban population in them 

 tends to grow as rapidly as in the old. A hundred 

 years ago there was practically no urban popula- 

 tion at all in a new country. Colorado even during 

 its first decade of Statehood had a third of its pop- 

 ulation in its capital city. Kentucky during its first 

 decade did not have much more than one per cent of 

 its population in its capital city. Kentucky grew as 

 rapidly as Colorado grew, a hundred years later ; but 

 Denver grew thirty or forty times as fast as Lex- 

 ington had ever grown. 



In the strongly marked frontier character no 

 traits were more pronounced than the dislike of 

 crowding and the tendency to roam to and fro, 

 hither and thither, always with a westward trend. 

 Boone, the typical frontiersman, embodied in his 

 own person the spirit of loneliness and restlessness 

 which marked the first venturers into the wilderness. 

 He had wandered in his youth from Pennsylvania 

 to Carolina, and, in the prime of his strength, from 

 North Carolina to Kentucky. When Kentucky be- 

 came well settled in the closing years of the century, 

 he crossed into Missouri, that he might once more 

 take up his life where he could see the game come 

 out of the woods at nightfall, and could wander 

 among trees untouched by the axe of the pioneer. 

 An English traveler of note who happened to en- 

 counter him about this time has left an interesting 

 account of the meeting. It was on the Ohio, and 

 Boone was in a canoe, alone with his dog and gun, 

 setting forth on a solitary trip into the wilderness 



