hey shouldered their guns, strapped
their wallets upon their backs and wandered through the Cumberland Gap
into the dense forests, and thick brakes, and beautiful plains which
soon opened upon their visions, more to indulge a habit of roving, and
gratify an excited curiosity, than from any other motive; and, arrived
upon the head-waters of the Kentucky, they built themselves rude log
cabins, and spent most of their lives in hunting and eating, and
fighting marauding bands of Indians. Of a similar character were the
earliest Virginians, who penetrated these wildernesses. The very first,
indeed, who wandered from the parent State over the Laurel Ridge, down
into the unknown regions on its northwest, came avowedly as hunters and
trappers; and such of them as escaped the tomahawk of the Indian, with
very few exceptions, remained hunters and trappers till their deaths.

"But this first class of pioneers was not either numerous enough,
or influential enough, to stamp its character upon the after-coming
hundreds; and the second class of immigrants into Kentucky was composed
of very different materials. Small farmers from North Carolina,
Virginia, and Pennsylvania, for the most part, constituted this; and
these daring adventurers brought with them intelligent and aspiring
minds, industrious and persevering habits, a few of the comforts of
civilized life, and some of the implements of husbandry. A number of
them were men who had received the rudiments of an English education,
and not a few of them had been reared up in the spirit, and a sincere
observance of the forms, of religious worship. Many, perhaps most of
them, were from the frontier settlements of the States named; and these
combined the habits of the hunter and agriculturist, and possessed, with
no inconsiderable knowledge of partially refined life, all that boldness
and energy, which subsequently became so distinctive a trait of the
character of the early settlers.

"This second class of the pioneers, or at least the mass of those who
constituted it, sought the plains and forests, and streams of Kentucky,
not to indulge any inclination for listless ramblings; nor as hunters or
trappers; nor yet for the purpose of gratifying an awakened curiosity:
they came deliberately, soberly, thoughtfully, _in search of a home_,
determined, from the outset, to win one, or perish in the attempt; they
came to cast their lot in a land that was new, to better their worldly
condition by