l, as well as trade; but in
Washington great cities, like Tacoma, Seattle, and Spokane, have sprung
up with a rapidity which was utterly unknown in the West a century ago.
Nowadays when new States are formed the urban population in them tends
to grow as rapidly as in the old. A hundred years ago there was
practically no urban population at all in a new country. Colorado even
during its first decade of statehood had a third of its population in
its capital city. Kentucky during its first decade did not have much
more than one per cent of its population in its capital city. Kentucky
grew as rapidly as Colorado grew, a hundred years later; but Denver grew
thirty or forty times as fast as Lexington had ever grown.

Restlessness of the Frontiersman. Boone's Wanderings.

In the strongly marked frontier character no traits were more pronounced
than the dislike of crowding and the tendency to roam to and fro, hither
and thither, always with a westward trend. Boone, the typical
frontiersman, embodied in his own person the spirit of loneliness and
restlessness which marked the first venturers into the wilderness. He
had wandered in his youth from Pennsylvania to Carolina, and, in the
prime of his strength, from North Carolina to Kentucky. When Kentucky
became well settled in the closing years of the century, he crossed into
Missouri, that he might once more take up his life where he could see
the game come out of the woods at nightfall, and could wander among
trees untouched by the axe of the pioneer. An English traveller of note
who happened to encounter him about this time has left an interesting
account of the meeting. It was on the Ohio, and Boone was in a canoe,
alone with his dog and gun, setting forth on a solitary trip into the
wilderness to trap beaver. He would not even join himself to the other
travellers for a night, preferring to plunge at once into the wild,
lonely life he so loved. His strong character and keen mind struck the
Englishman, who yet saw that the old hunter belonged to the class of
pioneers who could never themselves civilize the land, because they ever
fled from the face of the very civilization for which they had made
ready the land. In Boone's soul the fierce impatience of all restraint
burned like a fire. He told the Englishman that he no longer cared for
Kentucky, because its people had grown too easy of life; and that he
wished to move to some place where men still lived untrammelled and