lotte having closed it by November, 1774. Then began the real settlement of Kentucky, which, till that time, lay in all its forest beauty. The rude shed which Finley and Boone had built in 1769 had crumbled away, and the hut of Harrod was empty. Here and there trees had been felled, perhaps corn planted; but, save in the brains of speculators, the land was still, in reality, the same virgin wilderness which the first explorers had found it. And this leads us back to Boone again.

In North Carolina, at that period, there prevailed the same fever which filled Virginia, a fever for western lands. Among those who were infected was one Richard Henderson, a man of note in his own neighbourhood. He had grown to manhood without learning even to read or write; then he taught himself. He saw the world lying about him ready for use, and, filled as he was with energy, intellect, warm blood, and unguided ambition, he determined to use it for his own advancement. So he ran for constable, and won; then for under-sheriff; next began to creep up the slimy hill of legal renown and profit, until, while still young, he became associate chief judge of the colony. Meanwhile, he was no pedant, no dusty, dry recluse, but a gay, dashing, joking, popular man of the world. He lived freely, spent freely, speculated freely, and so lost all he had. What next? Thinking how to extricate himself, the rumors of the fine lands beyond the mountains came to his mind again. Some of his near friends had long known Boone, and had heard from his own lips the tales he delighted in of the paradise toward the setting sun. Would it be possible to get those far-off lands? If so, how? From the king or the Indians? Henderson saw the signs of the times; he felt King George's hand slipping off the unruly colonies; so he determined to get his fee from the savages. He soon learned the claim of the southern Indians, and quietly sought the leaders of the Cherokees, and with them blocked out a treaty for the purchase of the lands lying between the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers. Having associated with himself a number of rich and influential gentlemen for the prosecution of his scheme, a final deed was given by the Cherokees, on the 17th of March, 1775, at a meeting held on the Wataga, a branch of the Tennessee.

At this meeting Boone was present, on behalf of Hender

son and his associates; and at once set forward upon its conclusion, and probably before its signature, to open a road to the region first purchased. It was a difficult and dangerous task. The northern Indians were still smarting under the injuries which had caused the war of the year previous, and though the pipe of peace had been smoked with the Long Knives, it was no reason why their hunting-grounds should be invaded. As for the purchase from the Cherokees, what was it worth? The Cherokees never owned the land. Boone understood all this, and went upon his way with armed men, and muffled footsteps. Over the mountains, across the valleys, through the tangled thickets, round the rough knobs, silently and safely the road-makers, blazing the trees as they went, passed along; and at length the levels. they were seeking came in sight. Though the Indians had not, up to that time, shown themselves, yet no sooner were the invaders within the plain than they were attacked. But the savages found their skill met by equal skill, and although they succeeded in killing four of the whites, they were unable seriously to impede their progress; and on the 1st of April, 1775, the little band, having reached the Kentucky river and selected a site for their first station, began the construction of Boonesborough.

It was a fort, consisting of block-houses and cabins, which at first was the sole representative of the borough that bore Boone's name; a fort some two hundred and fifty feet long by a hundred and fifty in breadth, placed sixty yards south or west of the river, near a salt-lick. Two months and a half of labor were devoted to it, - labor not without danger; the pioneer worked with his axe in one hand and rifle in the other. Immediately upon its completion, Boone prepared to return to Carolina and bring his family to the new home he had made ready for them. But before he went, he had borne his part in the organization of the new government which was to oversee the affairs of Henderson's colony, the colony or province of Transylvania.

Upon the very day on which Boone and his assistants commenced their station, Henderson, with forty armed men, reached Powell's valley, on his way westward, and, following the road marked out by Boone, on or before the 20th of May, came to where his pioneers watched and labored. It was his purpose at once to organize his followers, agree

upon articles of union, and commence the process of legislation. Accordingly, word was instantly sent to the four stations which by that time had been begun; for in the interval between Boone's arrival, late in March, and Henderson's, late in May, James Harrod had returned with a company, and commenced a settlement at a spot called Boiling Spring; while Benjamin Logan, who had crossed the mountains in company with Henderson, had established himself at St. Asaph's. To these two germs of towns, and also to Harrodsburg and Boonesborough, Henderson sent solemn greeting, inviting each town to send delegates to the place we have last named, there to hold counsel and pass such laws as might seem fitting. On the 23d of May, according to summons, seventeen men took their places, as representatives of the youthful republic, under a vast elm-tree which grew about fifty yards from the Kentucky river, and around which the white clover spread as a carpet for their hall of legislation. A chairman and a clerk were chosen; God's blessing was asked by the Rev. Mr. Lythe, a delegate from Harrodsburg, and then the proprietors were informed that the meeting was ready to hear from them; whereupon Colonel Henderson made them a speech of some length on behalf of himself and associates. He laid down some of the great principles of legislation, and then drew the attention of his hearers to the peculiar laws required for them in their position. Among other subjects, he spoke of the need of laws providing for the recovery of debts, and referred with extreme severity to a proclamation which Lord Dunmore had issued when he heard of the purchase from the Cherokees, and wherein he put the world upon their guard against the baseless assertion of the Carolinians, that they were the true owners of the lands they claimed. Those lands the governor asserted to be within Virginia, and he treated the whole proceedings of the Transylvanians as illegal, and originating in a design to afford an asylum for debtors and desperadoes. The Carolina judge and his friends, many of whom were among the first men in America, treated with indignation, and rightly, this impudent assertion, that they wished to be the founders of an American Alsatia, a prophetic picture of Texas. while this ascription of base motives to them was needless and scandalous, Dunmore was perfectly right in the main point of Virginia's claim over the land in question; and his

But

proclamation prevented that sale of lands by Henderson which might otherwise have taken place, besides serving as notice of the intention of Virginia, afterwards carried into effect, to exterminate the colony of Transylvania as an interloper.

Meantime, the members of the convention responded to the assertion of the proprietors, that they were entitled to frame rules for their own government, and proceeded forthwith, with praiseworthy speed, to the business of legislation. They were in session three working-days, and in that time passed nine laws, and framed a compact between the proprietors and people of the province. The laws they passed were as follows:- for establishing courts; for punishing crimes; for regulating the militia; for punishing swearing and Sabbath-breaking; providing for writs of attachment; fixing fees; for preserving the range; for improving the breed of horses; for preserving game. It is pleasant to notice that the last three bills were brought in by the Boones, both of whom were members of the convention. Such were the labors of the first Western legislature; they were, as we have intimated, all in vain, in consequence of the superior claim of Virginia; but they show that there was a free and self-sustaining spirit in the colony, and prove the presence of right principle among its founders. The first settlers of Kentucky have had no little injustice done them, in consequence of the existence at a later period of a class of "river men," who became, in the view of many, the representatives of the whole race of pioneers. But nothing could be more unlike the boasting, swearing, fighting, drinking, gouging Mike Finks, than Boone, Logan, Harrod, and their comrades, the founders of the commonwealth.

No sooner was the fort of Boonesborough completed than its founder prepared to do that which his heart had long been set upon, and which he had once before undertaken; we mean, the transfer of his family to the West. He therefore left, about the middle of June, 1775, for the borders of the Clinch river, where his wife and children were still staying; and, having packed up his few household matters for the second time, in September he returned to Kentucky with his own and three other families, the party numbering twenty-seven fighting-men, and four women, the first four that had ever entered the wilderness, the "mothers of the West." These

bold females were Mrs. Boone, Mrs. McGary, Mrs. Denton, and Mrs. Hogan. And well may they be called bold. The contest with England was just commencing; Washington was besieging Gage; and all through the colonies the feelings of men were growing more and more embittered. Amid this gathering storm, it was clear that the British might be expected to use the Indians of the West and North as auxiliaries in the war which seemed to be inevitable, and those who made the frontier their home could look for nothing but the terrors of a border contest of unknown duration. Notwithstanding the dangers which beset them, emigrants flocked to the Eden of Kentucky. Some went thither, moved only by an insane love of gain, by a hope of making fortunes without labor in land speculation; others saw in the new settlements the germ of a great community, which was to be guided and governed, and trusted to obtain that power which so many souls covet as life-food; others, again, hoped for a society free from the evils and diseases of older communities; while the fewest were moved, as Boone and Harrod were, by a love of nature, of perfect freedom, and of the adventurous life in the woods. Some have held the opinion, that the great pioneer, Daniel himself, was a mere land-jobber, and have even thought him a very selfish and dishonest one; but that idea is passing away, we believe, from the few minds which ever held it. That he entered a good deal of land is perfectly true; and that his entries were singularly incorrect, and subjected him and all holding from him to utter loss, and that they led him to claim what was not his, is not to be questioned; but no reader of his life, we think, can long hesitate to believe, that, if he had made a fortune by his lands, he would have been unable to use it beyond those supplies which his forest-life called for. He would have pined and died as a nabob in the midst of civilization. He wanted a frontier, and the perils and pleasures of a frontier life, not wealth; and he was happier in his log-cabin, with a loin of venison and his ramrod for a spit, than he would have been amid the greatest profusion of modern luxuries.

Among those men who came to Kentucky in 1775 was George Rogers Clark, of whom mention more than once has already been made in this work. He was a leader and a master spirit; full of genius, full of energy and enterprise, his heart was as large and as fearless as his mind was pene