“Thus, through an uninterrupted scene of sylvan pleasures, I spent the time until the 27th day of July following, when my brother, to my great felicity, met me according to appointment, at our old camp.  Shortly after we left this place, not thinking it safe to stay there any longer, and proceeded to Cumberland River, reconnoitering that part of the country until March, 1771, and giving names to the different waters.

“Soon after, I returned home to my family, with a determination to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise, at the risk of my life and fortune.

“I returned safe to my old habitation, and found my family in happy circumstances.”

This extract is taken from the autobiography of Daniel Boone, written from his own dictation by John Filson, and published in 1784.  Some writers have censured this production as inflated and bombastic.  To us it seems simple and natural; and we have no doubt that the very words of Boone are given for the most part.  The use of glowing imagery and strong figures is by no means confined to highly-educated persons.  Those who are illiterate, as Boone certainly was, often indulge in this style.  Even the Indians are remarkably fond of bold metaphors and other rhetorical figures, as is abundantly proved by their speeches and legends.

While Boone had been engaged in his late hunting tour, other adventurers were examining the rich lands south of the Ohio.[18] Even in 1770, while Boone was wandering solitary in those Kentucky forests, a band of forty hunters, led by Colonel James Knox, had gathered from the valleys of New River, Clinch, and Holston, to chase the buffaloes of the West; nine of the forty had crossed the mountains, penetrated the desert and almost impassable country about the heads of the Cumberland, and explored the region on the borders of Kentucky and Tennessee.  This hunting party, from the length of time it was absent, is known in the traditions of the West as the party of the Long Hunters.  While these bold men were penetrating the valley of the Ohio, in the region of the Cumberland Gap, others came from Virginia and Pennsylvania, by the river; among them, and in the same year, that the Long Hunters were abroad, (1770), came no less noted a person than George Washington.  His attention, as we have before said, had been turned to the lands along the Ohio, at a very early period; he had himself large claims, as well as far-reaching plans of settlement, and he wished with his own eyes to examine the Western lands, especially those about the mouth of the Kanawha.  From the journal of his expedition, published by Mr. Sparks, in the Appendix to the second volume of his Washington Papers, we learn some valuable facts in reference to the position of affairs in the Ohio valley at that time.  We learn, for instance, that the Virginians were rapidly surveying and settling the lands south of the river as far down as the Kanawhas; and that the Indians, notwithstanding the treaty of Fort Stanwix, were jealous and angry at this constant invasion of their hunting-grounds.