But it was not his nature to lay anything very deeply to heart.  He laughed at misfortune, and pressed on singing and whistling through all storms.  He had a stout pair of hands, good nature, and adaptation to any kind of work.  There was no danger of his starving; and exposures, which many would deem hardships, were no hardships for him.  Undismayed he ran here and there, catching at such employment as he could find, until he had supplied himself with some comfortable clothing, and had a few dollars of ready money in his purse.  Again he set out alone and on foot for his far-distant home.  He had been absent over two years, and was new fifteen years of age.

He trudged along, day after day, through rain and sunshine, until he reached a broad stream called New River.  It was wintry weather.  The stream was swollen by recent rains, and a gale then blowing was ploughing the surface into angry waves.  Teams forded the stream many miles above.  There was a log hut here, and the owner had a frail canoe in which he could paddle an occasional traveller across the river.  But nothing would induce him to risk his life in an attempt to cross in such a storm.

The impetuous boy, in his ignorance of the effect of wind upon waves, resolved to attempt to cross, at every hazard, and notwithstanding all remonstrances.  He obtained a leaky canoe, which was half stranded upon the shore, and pushed out on his perilous voyage.  He tied his little bundle of clothes to the bows of the boat, that they might not be washed or blown away, and soon found himself exposed to the full force of the wind, and tossed by billows such as he had never dreamed of before.  He was greatly frightened, and would have given all he had in the world, to have been safely back again upon the shore.  But he was sure to be swamped if he should attempt to turn the boat broadside to the waves in such a gale.  The only possible salvation for him was to cut the approaching billows with the bows of the boat.  Thus he might possibly ride over them, though at the imminent peril, every moment, of shipping a sea which would engulf him and his frail boat in a watery grave.

In this way he reached the shore, two miles above the proper landing-place.  The canoe was then half full of water.  He was drenched with spray, which was frozen into almost a coat of mail upon his garments.  Shivering with cold, he had to walk three miles through the forest before he found a cabin at whose fire he could warm and dry himself.  Without any unnecessary delay he pushed on until he crossed the extreme western frontier line of Virginia, and entered Sullivan County, Tennessee.

An able-bodied young man like David Crockett, strong, athletic, willing to work, and knowing how to turn his hand to anything, could, in the humblest cabin, find employment which would provide him with board and lodging.  He was in no danger of starving.  There was, at that time, but one main path of travel from the East into the regions of the boundless West.