uantities of peltries, and
meeting with nothing to excite apprehension or alarm, they became
constantly more delighted with the country.

So passed their time, until the 22d of December. After this period
adventures of the most disastrous character began to crowd upon them. We
forthwith commence the narrative of incidents which constitute the
general color of Boone's future life.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV.

The exploring party divide into different routes--Boone and Stewart
taken prisoners by the Indians, and their escape--Boone meets with his
elder brother and another white man in the woods--Stewart killed by the
Indians, and the companion of the elder Boone destroyed by wolves--The
elder brother returns to North Carolina, leaving Boone alone in the
wilderness.

In order to extend the means of gaining more exact information with
regard to this beautiful country, the party divided, and took different
directions. Boone and Stewart formed one division, and the remaining
three the other. The two former had as yet seen few thick forests. The
country was much of it of that description, now known by the name of
"Barrens," or open woods, which had the appearance of having been
planted out with trees at wide and regular distances from each other,
like those of an orchard, allowing the most luxuriant growth of cane,
grass, or clover beneath them. They now passed a wide and deep forest,
in which the trees were large and thick. Among them were many of the
laurel tribe, in full verdure in mid winter. Others were thick hung with
persimmons, candied by the frost, nutritive, and as luscious as figs.
Others again were covered with winter grapes. Every thing tended to
inspire them with exalted notions of the natural resources of the
country, and to give birth to those extravagant romances, which
afterwards became prevalent, as descriptions of Kentucky. Such were
Finley's accounts of it--views which went abroad, and created even in
Europe an impression of a kind of new El Dorado, or rather rural
paradise. Other and very different scenes, in no great length of time,
disenchanted the new paradise, and presented it in the sober traits of
truth.

They were never out of sight of buffaloes, deer, and turkeys. At
night-fall they came in view of Kentucky river, and admired in unsated
astonishment, the precipices three hundred feet high, at the foot of
which, as in a channel cut out of the solid limestone, rolled the dark
water