As this was an era in their adventures, and an omen of the abundance of the vast regions of forests which they had descried from the summits of the mountains, they halted, made a camp, and skinned the animals, preserving the skins, fat, tongues, and choice pieces.  No epicures ever feasted higher than these athletic and hungry hunters, as they sat around their evening fire, and commented upon the ease with which their wants would be supplied in a country thus abounding with such animals.

After feasting again in the morning on the spoils of the preceding day, and packing such parts of the animals as their probable necessities suggested, they commenced their march; and in no great distance reached Red river, a branch of the Cumberland.  They followed the meanders of this river for some miles, until they reached, on the 7th day of June, Finley’s former station, where his preceding explorations of the western country had terminated.

Their journey to this point had lasted more than a month; and though the circumstances in which they had made it, had been generally auspicious, so long a route through unknown forests, and over precipitous mountains, hitherto untrodden by white men, could not but have been fatiguing in the extreme.  None but such spirits could have sustained their hardships without a purpose to turn back, and leave their exploration unaccomplished.

They resolved in this place to encamp, and remain for a time sufficient to recruit themselves for other expeditions and discoveries.  The weather had been for some time past, and still remained, rainy and unpleasant; and it became necessary that their station should be of such a construction, as to secure them a dry sleeping place from the rain.  The game was so abundant, that they found it a pleasure, rather than a difficulty, to supply themselves with food.  The buffaloes were seen like herds of cattle, dispersed among the cane-brakes, or feeding on the grass, or ruminating in the shade.  Their skins were of great utility, in furnishing them with moccasins, and many necessary articles indispensable to their comfortable subsistence at their station.

What struck them with unfailing pleasure was, to observe the soil, in general, of a fertility without example on the other side of the mountains.  From an eminence in the vicinity of their station, they could see, as far as vision could extend, the beautiful country of Kentucky.  They remarked with astonishment the tall, straight trees, shading the exuberant soil, wholly clear from any other underbrush than the rich cane-brakes, the image of verdure and luxuriance, or tall grass and clover.  Down the gentle slopes murmured clear limestone brooks.  Finley, who had some touch of scripture knowledge, exclaimed in view of this wilderness-paradise, so abundant in game and wild fowls, “This wilderness blossoms as the rose; and these desolate places are as the garden of God.”

“Ay,” responded Boone; “and who would remain on the sterile pine hills of North Carolina, to hear the screaming of the jay, and now and then bring down a deer too lean to be eaten?  This is the land of hunters, where man and beast will grow to their full size.”