234 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
on the site of the present town of Harrodsburg. This is 
about the extent of the chronology bearing upon that early 
period of his history. 
But for years before this period the name of the stalwart 
young hunter was familiar along the borders, and associated 
with that of Boone in many a feat of self-denying hardihood 
and generous chivalry. He was tall, strong, modest and 
simple. He had read no book but that of nature, knew no 
art but wood-craft, hated nothing on earth but an Indian and 
a pole-cat, and never said, “Boys, you do it!” but, “Boys, 
come on!” His rifle was the longest, the heaviest and the 
surest ; his calm, frank eye was never at a fault to mark the: 
distant game, to meet the gaze of deadly foe, or smile back 
truth to friend. His arm, resistless, as his tongue was slow. 
How can you make a hero out of a block so rough as this? 
We had nothing to do with the manufacture, God made him 
a hero, if he was one! 
The unwritten history of that time tells many a touching 
narrative of the deeds of this young hunter; his skill on the 
war-trail, his vigilance and his wonderful powers of endurance, 
soon made him one of the chief supports of the feeble and shat- 
tered settlements, which then, in the name of God and civi- 
lization, dared presume to hold and occupy this wide land, 
which for its richness and its beauty had for many centuries 
been the golden apple of dispute between powerful tribes of 
savages, on the North and the South. The hardiness and 
simplicity of his habits, his fresh and unbroken constitution, 
his great frame, endowed with a natural strength remarkable, 
everywhere gave him supremacy even over those border sons 
of Anak, among whom he seemed to move as peer. 
Such were his habits of incessant activity, and so cool his 
self-reliance, that he never waited for companions, on the 
longest and most dangerous of his expeditions. He would often 
be gone for weeks, and even months together, no one knew 
whither, or for what end, and the first thing heard of him 
