his farm on the Yadkin, which had been for
many years under cultivation, and no doubt brought him a sum amply
sufficient for the expenses of his journey and the furnishing of a new
home in the promised land. He had, of course, to overcome the natural
repugnance of his wife and children to leave the home which had become
dear to them; and he had also to enlist other adventurers to accompany
him. And here we deem it proper, before entering upon the account of his
departure, to quote from a contemporary,[20] some general remarks on
the character of the early settlers of Kentucky.

"Throughout the United States, generally, the most erroneous notions
prevail with respect to the character of the first settlers of Kentucky;
and by several of the American novelists, the most ridiculous uses have
been made of the fine materials for fiction which lie scattered over
nearly the whole extent of that region of daring adventure and romantic
incident. The common idea seems to be, that the first wanderers to
Kentucky were a simple, ignorant, low-bred, good-for-nothing set of
fellows, who left the frontiers and sterile places of the old States,
where a considerable amount of labor was necessary to secure a
livelihood, and sought the new and fertile country southeast of the Ohio
River and northwest of the Cumberland Mountains, where corn would
produce bread for them with simply the labor of planting, and where the
achievements of their guns would supply them with meat and clothing; a
set of men who, with that instinct which belongs to the beaver, built a
number of log cabins on the banks of some secluded stream, which they
surrounded with palisades for the better protection of their wives and
children, and then went wandering about, with guns on their shoulders,
or traps under their arms, leading a solitary, listless, _ruminating_
life, till aroused by the appearance of danger, or a sudden attack from
unseen enemies, when instantly they approved themselves the bravest of
warriors, and the most expert of strategists. The romancers who have
attempted to describe their habits of life and delineate their
characters, catching this last idea, and imagining things probable of
the country they were in, have drawn the one in lines the most grotesque
and absurd, and colored the other with a pencil dipped in all hues but
the right. To them the early pioneers appear to have been people of a
character demi-devil, demi-savage, not only with out the rema