and beauty.  The inhabitants of cities, who live in mansions, and read novels stored with unreal pictures of life and the heart, are apt to imagine that love, with all its golden illusions, is reserved exclusively for them.  It is a most egregious mistake.  A model of ideal beauty and perfection is woven in almost every youthful heart, of the brightest and most brilliant threads that compose the web of existence.  It may not be said that this forest maiden was deeply and foolishly smitten at first sight.  All reasonable time and space were granted to the claims of maidenly modesty.  As for Boone, he was incurably wounded by her, whose eyes he had shined, and as he was remarkable for the backwoods attribute of never being beaten out of his track, he ceased not to woo, until he gained the heart of Rebecca Bryan.  In a word, he courted her successfully, and they were married.

CHAPTER II.

Boone removes to the head waters of the Yadkin river—­He meets with Finley, who had crossed the mountains into Tennessee—­They agree to explore the wilderness west of the Alleghanies together.

After his marriage, Boone’s first step was to consider where he should find a place, in which he could unite the advantages of fields to cultivate, and range for hunting.  True to the impulse of his nature, he plunged deeper into the wilderness, to realize this dream of comfort and happiness.  Leaving his wife, he visited the unsettled regions of North Carolina, and selected a spot near the head waters of the Yadkin, for his future home.

The same spirit that afterwards operated to take Mrs. Boone to Kentucky, now led her to leave her friends, and follow her husband to a region where she was an entire stranger.  Men change their place of abode from ambition or interest; women from affection.  In the course of a few months, Daniel Boone had reared comfortable cabins upon a pleasant eminence at a little distance from the river bank, inclosed a field, and gathered around him the means of abundance and enjoyment.  His dwelling, though of rude exterior, offered the weary traveller shelter, a cheerful fire, and a plentiful board, graced with the most cordial welcome.  The faces that looked on him were free from the cloud of care, the constraint of ceremony, and the distrust and fear, with which men learn to regard one another in the midst of the rivalry, competition, and scramble of populous cities.  The spoils of the chase gave variety to his table, and afforded Boone an excuse for devoting his leisure hours to his favorite pursuit.  The country around spread an ample field for its exercise, as it was almost untouched by the axe of the woodsman.