of a wounded buffalo, halloing and shouting as they dashed through the underwood.  Whether he thought them Indians, or whether, as is more likely, he shared the fear and dislike felt by most of the Creoles for the American backwoodsmen, cannot be said; but certainly he left his cabin, swam the river, and plunging into the forest, straightway fled to his kinsfolk on the banks of the Wabash.  Spencer was soon left by his companions; though one of them stayed with him a short time, helping him to plant a field of corn.  Then this man, too, wished to return.  He had lost his hunting-knife; so Spencer went with him to the barrens of Kentucky, put him on the right path, and breaking his own knife, gave his departing friend a piece of the metal.  The undaunted old hunter himself returned to the banks of the Cumberland, and sojourned throughout the fall and winter in the neighborhood of the little clearing on which he had raised the corn crop; a strange, huge, solitary man, self-reliant, unflinching, cut off from all his fellows by endless leagues of shadowy forest.  Thus he dwelt alone in the vast dim wastes, wandering whithersoever he listed through the depths of the melancholy and wintry woods, sleeping by his camp-fire or in the hollow tree-trunk, ever ready to do battle against brute or human foe—­a stark and sombre harbinger of the oncoming civilization.

Spencer’s figure, seen through the mist that shrouds early western history, is striking and picturesque in itself; yet its chief interest lies in the fact that he was but a type of many other men whose lives were no less lonely and dangerous.  He had no qualities to make him a leader when settlements sprang up around him.  To the end of his days he remained a solitary hunter and Indian fighter, spurning restraint and comfort, and seeking the strong excitement of danger to give zest to his life.  Even in the time of the greatest peril from the savages he would not stay shut up in the forts, but continued his roving, wandering life, trusting to his own quick senses, wonderful strength, and iron nerves.  He even continued to lie out at night, kindling a fire, and then lying down to sleep far from it. [Footnote:  Southwestern Monthly, Nashville, 1852, vol.  II.  General Hall’s narrative.]

    Robertson Travels Thither.

Early in the year 1779 a leader of men came to the place where the old hunter had roamed and killed game; and with the new-comer came those who were to posses the land.  Robertson left the Watauga settlements soon after the spring opened, [Footnote:  It is very difficult to reconcile the dates of these early movements; even the contemporary documents are often a little vague, while Haywood, Ramsey, and Putnam are frequently months out of the way.  Apparently Robertson stayed as commissioner in Chota until February or March, 1779, when he gave warning of the intended raid of the Chickamaugas, and immediately afterwards came back to the settlements and started out for the