t inviting.

Colonel Boone, in particular, felt that a firm and resolute perseverance
had finally triumphed over every obstacle. That the rich and boundless
valleys of the great west--the garden of the earth--and the paradise
of hunters, had been won from the dominion of the savage tribes, and
opened as an asylum for the oppressed, the enterprising, and the free of
every land. He had travelled in every direction through this great
valley. He had descended from the Alleghanies into the fertile regions
of Tennessee, and traced the courses of the Cumberland and Tennessee
rivers. He had wandered with delight through the blooming forests of
Kentucky. He had been carried prisoner by the Indians through the
wilderness which is now the state of Ohio to the great lakes of the
north; he had traced the head waters of the Kentucky, the Wabash, the
Miamies, the Scioto, and other great rivers of the west, and had
followed their meanderings to their entrance into the Ohio; he had stood
upon the shores of this beautiful river, and gazed with admiration, as
he pursued its winding and placid course through endless forests to
mingle with the Mississippi; he had caught some glimmerings of the
future, and saw with the prophetic eye of a patriot, that this great
valley must soon become the abode of millions of freemen; and his heart
swelled with joy, and warmed with a transport which was natural to a
mind so unsophisticated and disinterested as his.

Boone rejoiced in a peace which put an end to his perils and anxieties,
and which now gave him full leisure and scope to follow his darling
pursuit of hunting. He had first been led to the country by that spirit
of the hunter, which in him amounted almost to a passion. This
propensity may be said to be natural to man. Even in cities and populous
places we find men so fond of this pastime that they ransack the
cultivated fields and enclosures of the farmer, for the purpose of
killing the little birds and squirrels, which, from their
insignificance, have ventured to take up their abode with civilized man.
What, then, must have been the feelings of Boone, to find himself in the
grand theatre of the hunter--filled with buffaloes, deer, bears, wild
turkeys, and other noble game?

The free exercise of this darling passion had been checked and
restrained, ever since the first settlement of the country, by the
continued wars and hostile incursions of the Indians. The path of the
hunter had been ambus