deeper and further into
the wilderness of Tennessee. Several of them, chiefly from Virginia,
hearing of the abundance of game with which the woods were stocked, and
allured by the prospects of gain, which might be drawn from this source,
formed themselves into a company, composed of Wallen, Scaggs, Blevins,
Cox, and fifteen others, and came into the valley since known as
Carter's Valley, in Hawkins County, Tennessee. They hunted eighteen
mouths upon Clinch and Powell's Rivers. Wallen's Creek and Wallen's
Ridge received their name from the leader of the company; as also did
the station which they erected in the present Lee County, Virginia,
the name of Wallen's station. They penetrated as far north as Laurel
Mountain, in Kentucky, where they terminated their journey, having met
with a body of Indians, whom they supposed to be Shawnees. At the head
of one of the companies that visited the West this year 'came Daniel
Boon, from the Yadkin, in North Carolina, and traveled with them as low
as the place where Abingdon now stands, and there left them.'

"This is the first time the advent of Daniel Boon to the western wilds
has been mentioned by historians, or by the several biographers of that
distinguished pioneer and hunter. There is reason, however, to believe
that he had hunted upon Watauga earlier. The writer is indebted to N.
Gammon, Esq., formerly of Jonesboro, now a citizen of Knoxville, for
the following inscription, still to be seen upon a beech tree, standing
in sight and east of the present stage-road, leading from Jonesboro to
Blountsville, and in the valley of Boon's Creek, a tributary of Watauga:"

D. Boon
CillED A. BAR On
Tree
in ThE
yEAR
1760

"Boon was eighty-six years old when he died, which was September, 1820.
He was thus twenty-six years old when the inscription was made. When he
left the company of hunters in 1761, as mentioned above by Haywood, it
is probable that he did so to revisit the theatre of a former hunt upon
the creek that still bears his name, and where his camp is still pointed
out near its banks. It is not improbable, indeed, that he belonged to,
or accompanied, the party of Doctor Walker, on his first, or certainly
on his second, tour of exploration in 1760. The inscription is
sufficient authority, as this writer conceives, to date the arrival of
Boon in Tennessee as early as its date, 1760, thus