e no spoil;
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
Of this unsighing people of the woods.'"

We quote these beautiful lines, because they so aptly and forcibly
describe the peculiar character of Boone; and to a certain extent, as
Mr. Wheeler intimates, his character was that of his times and of his
associates.

It was during the residence of the family on the banks of the Yadkin,
that Boone formed the acquaintance of Rebecca Bryan, whom he married.[7]
The marriage appears, by comparison of dates, to have taken place in the
year 1755. "One almost regrets," says Mr. Peck, "to spoil so beautiful a
romance, as that which has had such extensive circulation in the various
'Lives of Boone,' and which represents him as mistaking the bright eyes
of this young lady, in the dark, for those of a deer; a mistake that
nearly proved fatal from the unerring rifle of the young hunter. Yet in
truth, we are bound to say, that no such mistake ever happened. Our
backwoods swains never make such mistakes."

The next five years after his marriage, Daniel Boone passed in the quiet
pursuits of a farmer's life, varied occasionally by hunting excursions
in the woods. The most quiet and careless of the citizens of North
Carolina were not unobservant, however, of the political aspect of the
times. During this period the people, by their representatives in the
Legislature, began that opposition to the Royal authority, which was in
after years to signalize North Carolina as one of the leading Colonies
in the Revolutionary struggle.

The newly-appointed Royal Governor, Arthur Dobbs, arrived at Newbern in
the autumn of 1754. "Governor Dobbs's administration of ten years," says
the historian Wheeler, "was a continued contest between himself and the
Legislature, on matters frivolous and unimportant. A high-toned temper
for Royal prerogatives on his part, and an indomitable resistance of the
Colonists ... The people were much oppressed by Lord Grenville's agents.
They seized Corbin, his agent, who lived below Edenton, and brought him
to Enfield, where he was compelled to give bond and security to produce
his books and disgorge his illegal fees."

This matter of illegal fees was part of a system of oppression, kindred
to the famous Stamp Act--a system which was destined to grow more and
more intolerable under Governor Tryon's administration, and to lead to
the formation of the famous company of Regulators, whose resistance of
taxation and tyr