every thing but their rifles. After having had such
melancholy experience of the dangers to which they were exposed, we
would naturally suppose that their fortitude would have given way, and
that they would instantly have returned to the settlements. But the most
remarkable feature in Boone's character was a calm and cold equanimity
which rarely rose to enthusiasm and never sunk to despondence.

His courage undervalued the danger to which he was exposed, and his
presence of mind, which never forsook him, enabled him, on all occasions
to take the best means of avoiding it. The wilderness, with all its
dangers and privations, had a charm for him, which is scarcely
conceivable by one brought up in a city; and he determined to remain
alone while his brother returned to Carolina for an additional supply of
ammunition, as their original supply was nearly exhausted. His situation
we should now suppose in the highest degree gloomy and dispiriting. The
dangers which attended his brother on his return were nearly equal to
his own; and each had left a wife and children, which Boone acknowledged
cost him many an anxious thought.

But the wild and solitary grandeur of the country around him, where not
a tree had been cut, nor a house erected, was to him an inexhaustible
source of admiration and delight; and he says to himself, that some
of the most rapturous moments of his life were spent in those lonely
rambles. The utmost caution was necessary to avoid the savages, and
scarcely less to escape the ravenous hunger of the wolves that prowled
nightly around him in immense numbers. He was compelled frequently to
shift his lodging, and by undoubted signs, saw that the Indians had
repeatedly visited his hut during his absence. He some times lay in
canebrakes without fire, and heard the yells of the Indians around him.
Fortunately, however, he never encountered them.[17]

Mr. Perkins, in his Annals of the West, speaking of this sojourn
of the brothers in the wilderness, says: And now commenced that most
extraordinary life on the part of these two men which has, in a great
measure, served to give celebrity to their names; we refer to their
residence, entirely alone, for more than a year, in a land filled with
the most subtle and unsparing enemies, and under the influence of no
other motive, apparently, than a love of adventure, of Nature, and of
solitude. Nor were they, during this time, always together. For three
months, Daniel remaine