Boone’s Trading Ventures.

In addition to furs, quantities of ginseng were often carried to the eastern settlements at this period when the commerce of the west was in its first infancy, and was as yet only struggling for an outlet down the Mississippi.  One of those who went into this trade was Boone.  Although no longer a real leader in Kentucky life he still occupied quite a prominent position, and served as a Representative in the Virginia Legislature, [Footnote:  Draper’s MSS., Boone MSS., from Bourbon Co.  The papers cover the years from 1784 on to ’95.] while his fame as a hunter and explorer was now spread abroad in the United States, and even Europe.  To travellers and new-comers generally, he was always pointed out as the first discoverer of Kentucky; and being modest, self-contained and self-reliant he always impressed them favorably.  He spent most of his time in hunting, trapping, and surveying land warrants for men of means, being paid, for instance, two shillings current money per acre for all the good laud he could enter on a ten-thousand acre Treasury warrant. [Footnote:  Do., certificate of G. Imlay, 1784.] He also traded up and down the Ohio River, at various places, such as Point Pleasant and Limestone; and at times combined keeping a tavern with keeping a store.  His accounts contain much quaint information.  Evidently his guests drank as generously as they ate; he charges one four pounds sixteen shillings for two months’ board and two pounds four shillings for liquor.  He takes the note of another for ninety-three gallons of cheap corn whiskey.  Whiskey cost sixpence a pint, and rum one shilling; while corn was three shillings a bushel, and salt twenty-four shillings, flour, thirty-six shillings a barrel, bacon sixpence and fresh pork and buffalo beef threepence a pound.  Boone procured for his customers or for himself such articles as linen, cloth, flannel, corduroy, chintz, calico, broadcloth, and velvet at prices varying according to the quality, from three to thirty shillings a yard; and there was also evidently a ready market for “tea ware,” knives and forks, scissors, buttons, nails, and all kinds of hardware.  Furs and skins usually appear on the debit sides of the various accounts, ranging in value from the skin of a beaver, worth eighteen shillings, or that of a bear worth ten, to those of deer, wolves, coons, wildcats, and foxes, costing two to four shillings apiece.  Boone procured his goods from merchants in Hagerstown and Williamsport, in Maryland, whither he and his sons guided their own packtrains, laden with peltries and with kegs of ginseng, and accompanied by droves of loose horses.  He either followed some well-beaten mountain trail or opened a new road through the wilderness as seemed to him best at the moment. [Footnote:  Do., passim.]