farm. But he was not long permitted to remain unmolested. His title, owing to the imperfect nature of the land laws of Kentucky, was legally decided to be defective, and Boone was deprived of all claim to the soil which he had explored, settled and so bravely defended. In 1795, disgusted with civilized society, he sought a new home in the wilds of the Far West, on the banks of the Missouri, then within the dominion of Spain. He was treated there with kindness and attention by the public authorities, and he found the simple manners of that frontier people exactly suited to his peculiar habits and temper. With them he spent the residue of his days, and was gathered to his fathers, September 26th, 1820, in the 86th year of his age. He was buried in a coffin which he had had made for years, and placed under his bed, ready to receive him whenever he should be called from these earthly scenes. In the summer of 1845, his remains were removed to Frankfort, Kentucky, and a monument erected by public spirited citizens of the place. In person, Boone was five feet ten inches in height, and of robust and powerful proportions. He was ordinarily attired as a hunter, wearing a hunting shirt and moccasins. His biographer, who saw him at his residence on the Missouri River, but a short time before his death, says, that on his introduction to Col. Boone, the impressions were those of surprise, admiration and delight. In boyhood, he had read of Daniel Boone, the pioneer of Kentucky, the celebrated hunter and Indian fighter; and imagination had portrayed a rough, fierce-looking, uncouth specimen of humanity, and of course, at this period of life, a fretful and unattractive old man. But in every respect the reverse appeared. His high, bold forehead was slightly bald, and his silvered locks were combed smooth; his countenance was ruddy and fair, and exhibited the simplicity of a child. His voice was soft and melodious; a smile frequently played over his features in conversation; his clothing was the coarse, plain manufacture of the family; but everything about him denoted that kind of comfort which was congenial to his habits and feelings, and evinced a happy old age. His room was part of a range of log cabins, kept in order by his affectionate daughter and grand-daughters, and every member of the household appeared to delight in administering to the comforts of "grandfather Boone," as he was familiarly called.

When age had enfeebled his once athletic frame, he would make an excursion, twice a year, to some remote hunting-ground, employing a companion, whom he bound by a written contract to take care of him; and should he die in the wilderness, to bring his body to the cemetery which he had selected as a final restingplace.

Boone was a fair specimen of the better class of western pioneers; honest, kind-hearted and liberal-in short, one of nature's noblemen. He abhorred a mean action, and delighted in honesty and truth. While he acknowledged that he used guile with the Indians, he excused it as necessary to counteract their duplicity,

but despised in them this trait of character. He never delighted in shedding human blood, even of his enemies in war, and avoided it whenever he could. His most remarkable quality was an enduring and invincible fortitude.

HUNTING AMONG THE EARLY PIONEERS.

HUNTING was an important part of the employment of the first settlers of the West. For some years the woods supplied them with the greater part of their subsistence, and with regard to some families, at certain times, the whole of it; for it was no uncommon thing for families to live for months without a mouthful of bread. It frequently happened that there was no breakfast until it was obtained from the woods. Fur and peltry were the people's money. They had nothing else to give in exchange for rifles, salt and iron on the other side of the mountains.

The fall and early part of the year was the season for hunting the deer, and the whole of the winter, including part of the spring, for bears and fur-skinned animals. It was a customary saying, that fur was good during every month in the name of which the letter R occurs. As soon as the leaves were pretty well down, and the weather became rainy, accompanied with light snows, the settlers, after acting the part of husbandmen, so far as the state of warfare permitted them so to do, soon began to feel that they were hunters. They became uneasy at home. Everything about them grew disagreeable. The house was too warm; the feather-bed too soft; and even the good wife was not thought, for the time being, a suitable companion. The mind of the hunter was wholly occupied with the camp and the chase.

They would often be seen to get up early in the morning at this season, walk out hastily, and look anxiously to the woods, and snuff the autumnal winds with the highest rapture; then return into the house, and cast a quick and attentive look at the rifle, which was always suspended to a joist by a couple of buckhorns, or little forks. His hunting-dog, understanding the intentions of his master, would wag his tail, and by every blandishment in his power express his readiness to accompany him to the woods. A day was soon appointed for the march of the little cavalcade to the camp. Two or three horses, furnished with pack-saddles, were loaded with flour, Indian-meal, blankets, and everything else requisite for the use of the hunter.

A hunting-camp, or what is called a half-faced cabin, was of the following form: the back part of it was sometimes a large log; at the distance of eight or ten feet from this, two stakes were set in the ground, a few inches apart; and at the distance of eight or ten feet from these two more to receive the ends of the poles for the

sides of the camp. The whole slope of the roof was from the front to the back; the covering was made of slabs, skins or blankets; or, if in the spring of the year, the bark of hickory or ash trees. The front was left entirely open; the fire was built directly before this opening; the cracks between the logs were filled with moss; dry leaves served for a bed; and the whole was finished in a few hours. A little more pains would have made the hunting-camp a complete defense against the Indians; but careless in that respect, the hunters were often surprised and killed in their camps. The site for the camp was selected with all the sagacity of the backwoodsman, so as to have it sheltered by the surrounding hills from every wind, but more especially from those of the north

and west.

Hunting was not a mere ramble in pursuit of game, in which there was nothing of skill and calculation; on the contrary, when the hunter set out in the morning, he was informed by the weather in what situation he might reasonably expect to meet with game; whether on the bottoms, sides or tops of the hills. In stormy weather, the deer always seek the most sheltered places, and the leeward sides of the hills. In rainy weather, in which there is not much wind, they keep in the open woods, on the highest ground. In every situation, it was requisite for the hunter to ascertain the course of the wind, so as to get leeward of the game. This he effected by putting his finger in his mouth, and holding it there until it became warm, and then raising it above his head, the side which first becomes cold shows which way the wind blows.

As it was requisite for the hunter too to know the cardinal points, he had only to observe the trees to ascertain them. The bark of an aged tree is thicker and much rougher on the north than on the south side. The same thing may be said of the moss on

the trees.

The whole business of the hunter consists of a series of intrigues. From morning until night he was on the alert to gain the wind of his game, and approach them without being discovered. If he succeeded in killing a deer, he skinned it, and hung it up out of the reach of the wolves, and immediately resumed the chase until the close of the evening, when he bent his way to his camp, kindled up his fire, and together with his fellow-hunter cooked supper. The supper finished, the adventures of the day furnished the tales for the evening. The spike-buck, the two and threepronged buck, the doe and barren-doe, figured through their anecdotes with great advantage. It should seem that after hunting awhile on the same ground, the hunters became acquainted with nearly all the gangs of deer within their range, so as to know each flock of them when they saw them. Often some old buck, by means of his superior sagacity and watchfulness, saved his little gang from the hunter's skill, by giving timely notice of his approach. The cunning of the hunter and that of the old buck were staked against each other, and it frequently happened, at the

conclusion of the season, the old fellow was left the free, uninjured tenant of the forest; but if his rival succeeded in bringing him down, the victory was followed by no small amount of boasting on the part of the conqueror.

When the weather was not suitable for hunting, the skins and carcasses of the game were brought in and disposed of. Many of the hunters rested from their labors on the Sabbath day; some from motives of piety; others said that when they hunted on Sunday, they were sure to have bad luck the rest of the week.

ADVENTURES OF KENTON.

SIMON KENTON, one of the most noted pioneers of the West, was born in Virginia in 1755. He was of humble parentage, and of mixed Scotch and Irish origin. In the spring of 1771, three years before Dunmore's war, when he was just sixteen years of age, he had a serious quarrel with a young man, a neighbor, by the name of Veach. Simon became desperately enamored with a young lady, who soon after married young Veach. Stung to frenzy by this disappointment, and imagining himself exquisitely injured, he, in the heat of passion, attended the wedding uninvited. As soon as he entered the room, he went forward and intruded himself between the groom and his bride. The result was, that young Veach, as soon as his back was turned, knocked him down, gave him a severe beating, and he was expelled from the house with black eyes and sore bones.

A few days after he met Veach alone, and anxious to repair his wounded honor, had a pitched battle with him. Victory for some time hung on a doubtful balance. Simon at length threw his antagonist to the ground, and as quick as thought drawing his queue of long hair around a small sapling, kicked him in his breast and stomach until all resistance ceased. Veach attempted to rise, but immediately sunk and began to vomit blood. As Simon had not intended to kill him, he now raised him up and spoke kindly to him, but he made no answer, and sunk to the ground apparently lifeless. Erroneously supposing he had murdered him, he was overcome with the most poignant and awful sensations, and immediately fled to the woods. Lying concealed by day and traveling by night, he passed over the Alleghanies, until he arrived, nearly starved, at a settlement on Cheat River, where he changed his name to Simon Butler. Soon after he went to Fort Pitt. Until Dunmore's war broke out, he employed his time mainly in hunting. Kenton described this as the most happy period of his life. He was in fine health, found plenty of game and fish, and free from the cares of an ambitious world and the vexations of domestic life, he passed his time in that happy state of ease, indolence, and independence, which is the glory of the hunter of the forest.

One cold evening in March, after a hard day's hunt, Kenton and his two companions were reposing upon bear-skin pallets before a cheerful camp-fire, in the Kanawha region, when suddenly the sharp crack of an Indian rifle laid one of their number a lifeless corpse. They were surrounded by a party of lurking Indians. Kenton and his surviving companion sprang to their feet and instantly fled, with only their lives and their shirts. Thus exposed, in winter weather, in the wilderness, they were compelled to wander through briers, over rough stones and frozen ground, without fire and without food for six days, until at last they fell in with a party of hunters descending the Ohio, and obtained relief. Their legs and bodies had become so lacerated and torn that they were more than two days in traveling the last two miles.

During Dunmore's war Kenton was employed as a spy. In the spring of 1775 he descended the Ohio to explore the famous "cane lands" of Kentucky. He and his companion, Williams, landed at the mouth of Limestone, on the site of Maysville, made a camp a few miles inland, and finished a small clearing, where they planted some corn-the first planted north of the Kentucky River. Here, tending their corn with their tomahawks, they remained the undisputed masters of all they could see, until they had the pleasure of eating roasting-ears.

In one of his solitary hunting excursions at this time, Kenton, disguised as an Indian, encountered upon the waters of Elkhorn, Michael Stoner, a hunter from North Carolina, also in Indian guise. A silent contest of Indian strategy for mutual destruction commenced, but not a word was spoken. Each believing his antagonist an Indian, sought by all the arts of Indian warfare, to protect himself and draw the enemy's fire. After mutual efforts and maneuvers ineffectually to draw each other from his shelter, or to steal his fire, Stoner suspecting that his antagonist was not an Indian, from his covert, exclaimed, "For God's sake, if you are a white man, speak!" The spell was broken, and they became companions in the solitary wilderness. Stoner conducted and introduced Kenton to the new settlements of Boonesborough and Harrodsburg. He had before supposed that he and Williams were the first settlers of Kentucky.

He returned a short time after to his camp and clearing. But the Indians had been there and plundered it. Hard by he found the evidences of a fire, with human bones near it, which proclaimed too sadly the fate of Williams, the first victim in Kentucky of the

war.

Kenton returned to Harrodsburg, and served the different stations in the capacity of a spy and ranger, to detect the approach of the Indians. He became highly distinguished for his courage, skill, and stratagem against the wary savage. He had then just arrived at manhood, and was a noble specimen of the hardy, active backwoodsman hunter. He was over six feet in stature, erect, graceful, and of uncommon strength, endurance, and agility. His