“This jealousy and anger were not supposed to cool during the years next succeeding, and when Thomas Bullitt and his party descended the Ohio in the summer of 1773, he found that no settlements would be tolerated south of the river, unless the Indian hunting-grounds were left undisturbed.  To leave them undisturbed was, however, no part of the plan of these white men.

“This very party, which Bullitt led, and in which were the two McAfees, Hancock, Taylor, Drennon and others, separated, and while part went up the Kentucky River, explored the banks, and made important surveys, including the valley in which Frankfort stands, the remainder went on to the Falls, and laid out, in behalf of John Campbell and John Connolly, the plan of Louisville.  All this took place in the summer of 1773; and in the autumn of that year, or early in the next, John Floyd, the deputy of Colonel William Preston, the surveyor of Fincastle County, Virginia, in which it was claimed that Kentucky was comprehended, also crossed the mountains; while General Thompson of Pennsylvania, made surveys upon the north fork of the Licking.  When Boone, therefore, in September, commenced his march for the West, (as we shall presently relate), the choice regions which he had examined three years before, were known to numbers, and settlers were preparing to desecrate the silent and beautiful woods.  Nor did the prospects of the English colonists stop with the settlements of Kentucky.  In 1773, General Lyman, with a number of military adventurers, went to Natchez and laid out several townships in that vicinity; to which point emigration set so strongly, that we are told, four hundred families passed down the Ohio on their way thither, during six weeks of the summer of that year."[19]

[Footnote 17:  McClung.]

[Footnote 18:  Perkins.  “Annals of the West.”]

[Footnote 19:  Perkins, “Annals of the West.”]

CHAPTER VI.

Daniel Boone remains two years in North Carolina after his return from the West—­He prepares to emigrate to Kentucky—­Character of the early settlers to Kentucky—­The first class, hunters—­The second class, small farmers—­The third class, men of wealth and government officers.

Daniel Boone had now returned to his home on the banks of the Yadkin, after an absence of no less than two years, during which time he had not tasted, as he remarks in his autobiography, either salt, sugar, or bread.  He must have enjoyed, in no ordinary degree, the comforts of home.  Carolina, however, was to be his home but for a short time.  He had fully determined to go with his family to Kentucky, and settle in that lovely region.  He was destined to found a State.