DAN BEARD AND THE BOYS 



153 



ABOUT DANIEL BOONE. 



Editor Recreation : 



1 am pleased to observe that Recreation 

 has opened a new department to do honor to 

 the memory of one who must ever more and 

 more be regarded as one of our greatest 

 Americans. You know that our wonderful 

 country was settled originally by distinct 

 elasses of people — the Puritan in New Eng- 

 land, the Cavalier in Virginia, the Scotch, 

 Irish, the Germans, the French; and each pos- 

 sessed qualities of rare value in the building 

 of a great nation. But it was not until just 

 before the Revolutionary War, when the 

 country "over the mountains," as they called 

 it, began to be settled, that the blood of Puri- 

 tan, Cavalier, Scotch - Irish, German and 

 French began to mingle and produce a type, 

 the only type, 

 which may be 

 called really 

 and t r u 1 y 

 American. The 

 work of wrest- 

 ing the wilder- 

 ness from the 

 savage was 

 work for men, 

 and Boone was 

 put forward by 

 those who 

 lived, worked, 

 hunted by his 

 side, because 

 more than any 

 other he pos- 

 sessed those 

 qualities of 

 body and mind 

 which were 

 needed in that 

 time and place. 



Few persons 

 have been writ- 

 ten about more 

 than Boone, yet 

 as recently as 

 three years 



ago a reviewer of the published writings con- 

 cerning him made this startling but true state- 

 ment: "The few so-called biographies of 

 Boone give but little information concerning 

 the real man, and no two seem to agree on 

 any of the vital points in his life"; adding, 

 "An adequate and trustworthy life of Daniel 

 Boone has yet to be written." This, however, 

 has since been done, but it could not be done 

 at a 11 until that painstaking gentleman, the 

 late Dr. Lyman H Draper, had spent long- 

 years of his life, traveling from place to place, 

 ransacking old records and musty bundles of 

 papers in old garrets in the country where 

 Boone spent his adventurous life. We have 

 learned much that is new, but this much we 

 can know: that the old Boone, the hero of 

 our boyhood days, remains still the same lov- 



DR, T. R. SAFFORD AND BOONE RELICS. 



able character — and of how many so-called 

 "great" men can this be said? 



It was not my purpose so much to point 

 out all this as to tell you that last summer, 

 upon a trip to Ohio, I found one of the old 

 traps that was used by Daniel Boone for 

 catching beaver, and I enclose you the pic- 

 ture which I made of the same, the first pic- 

 ture that has ever been made of it. Concern- 

 ing which, I must tell you of a little joke. 

 Chancing to pick up a popular history of the 

 early settlement of Ohio, I found therein 

 mention of a hunting and trapping trip made 

 by Daniel Boone in 1792 upon Raccoon Creek, 

 in southern' Ohio, in which it stated that one 

 of the "wolf traps" used by him on that trip 

 was still in existence. There was a picture 

 of a "wolf trap" given, the inference being 



that it was a 

 picture of the 

 Boone trap. 

 Imagine my 

 feelings, how- 

 ever, upon dis- 

 covering that it 

 was a drawing 

 made by myself 

 ten years ago 

 and published 

 in a well-known 

 magazine. not 

 of a wolf trap, 

 but of a large 

 four - spring 

 bear trap, 

 which I had 

 seen on the 

 Tobique river, 

 in Canada ! The 

 moral of this 

 as Mr. Balzac 

 might say, is 

 when you '"lift" 

 somebody else's 

 work without 

 permission, you 

 should be sure 

 that you have 

 the right thing! Seriously, however, you will 

 know the interest it was to me to take in my 

 hands the old rusted trap that was actually 

 Boone's, presented more than a hundred years 

 ago to a valued friend, Col. Robert Safford, 

 of Gallipolis, Ohio, who hunted with him on 

 that trip. It is all hand-made, by a black- 

 smith, and you will notice that the pan is 

 lost, and the temper is gone from one of the 

 springs. It was exhibited by a son of Colonel 

 Safford at the Philadelphia Centennial in 

 1876, and still bears the label it had on then, 

 and is now carefully treasured by a grand- 

 son, along with a little belt-axe that Boone 

 left at the same time; so that it is quite au- 

 thentic. There was another trap, a great bear 

 trap, which Boone called "Old Isaac," and 

 you may read that "Old Isaac" is still at Gal- 



