for public service. He was
given large land bounties by Virginia, in recognition of services
rendered, but conflicting claims prevented him coming into possession of
the land for years, thus leaving him helpless and poor in his old age. The
Virginia legislature voted him a jeweled sword, which was sent to the old
man by a special messenger. When the young man made his speech presenting
the sword, Clark replied, "Young man, go tell Virginia, when she needed a
sword I found one. Now, I need bread." The worn-out old soldier lived only
a little while longer, and in 1818 died and was buried at Locust Grove,
Ky. It has been said that a French officer who met Clark at Yorktown, on
his return to France, said to the king: "Sire, there are two Washingtons
in America." "What do you mean?" said the king. "I mean," said the
officer, "that there is Washington whom the world knows; and there is
George Rogers Clark, the conqueror of the Northwest, as great a man as
Washington in his field of action and for his opportunity."

Simon Kenton shared a like fate. Losing his land, acre by acre, this
simple-hearted old pioneer found himself penniless in his old age. He was
then allowed by law, to the shame of all civilization, to be cast into
prison for debt upon the same spot upon which he had built his first cabin
in 1775. In 1799, as a beggar, he moved into Ohio. In 1813, he joined
Governor Shelby's troops and was with them in the Battle of the Thames. In
1820, this poor old man moved to a site on Scioto river, where the Indians
forty years before had tied him to a stake to be burned. Near the close of
his life he was given some mountain lands and a small pension.

Daniel Boone lost all his fine lands in Kentucky, also, and came to such
poverty as to lead him in one of his petitions to say, "I have not a spot
of ground whereon to lay my bones." He left Kentucky, saying he would
never return to live in a country so ungrateful. About 1796 he moved to
Missouri and settled fifty miles from St. Louis. Spain owned that
territory then, and the Spanish government gave him a liberal grant of
land. Around him his sons and daughters and their families settled. The
broad forests were full of game, and here Boone again indulged his passion
for a hunter's life. The old hunter neglected to complete his titles to
his new lands, and these he also lost. Congress afterward made him a
smaller grant. He died in Missouri in 1820, at the age of eighty-six, and
wa