AUDUBON AND BOONE. 161 



two athletic youths, the sons of the woman, made their en- 

 trance. She whispered with them a little while, when they 

 fell to eating and drinking, to a state bordering on intoxica- 

 tion. "Judge of my astonishment," he says, "when I saw 

 this incarnate fiend take a large carving knife, and go to the 

 grindstone to whet its edge ! I saw her pour the water on 

 the turning-machine, and watched her working away with the 

 dangerous instrument, until the sweat covered every part of 

 my body, in spite of my determination to defend myself to 

 the last. Her task finished, she walked to her reelingr sons, 

 and said : ' There, that'll soon settle him ! Boys, kill yon 



, and then for the watch !' I turned, cocked my gun 



locks silently, and lay ready to start up and shoot the first 

 who might attempt my life. Fortunately, two strangers enter- 

 ing at the moment, the purpose of the woman was disclosed, 

 and she and her drunken sons secured." 



But before and during this most erratic period of Audubon's 

 long life of vicissitude and exposure, these same solitudes 

 amidst which he wandered, knew another shaggy presence 

 even better than his own. The same earthquakes, the same 

 hurricanes, and the same red foe had beset the path of Daniel 

 Boone — and he, too, the rough, strong birth of nature, was a 

 Hunter-Naturalist ! Though his deeds and aims were not 

 after the manner of those of Audubon, yet were they as 

 grand, and their lives, how much alike ! These remarkable 

 men, one the Pioneer of Civilization and the other of Art and 

 Science, in that great wilderness, through which the path of 

 empire leads, did not meet until the career of each had been 

 finally shaped, and then what grandeur was there in such 

 meetings ! 



But we will trace rapidly the career of Boone up to these 

 periods, and see how much resemblance in the outline of the 

 gigantic proportions of these two men shall appear. 



The great Pioneer was born in 1746, and, though a native 



of jNIaryland, had lived as a hunter in two other States- — 



11 



