n a ten-thousand acre Treasury
warrant. [Footnote: _Do_., certificate of G. Imlay, 1784.] He also
traded up and down the Ohio River, at various places, such as Point
Pleasant and Limestone; and at times combined keeping a tavern with
keeping a store. His accounts contain much quaint information. Evidently
his guests drank as generously as they ate; he charges one four pounds
sixteen shillings for two months' board and two pounds four shillings
for liquor. He takes the note of another for ninety-three gallons of
cheap corn whiskey. Whiskey cost sixpence a pint, and rum one shilling;
while corn was three shillings a bushel, and salt twenty-four shillings,
flour, thirty-six shillings a barrel, bacon sixpence and fresh pork and
buffalo beef threepence a pound. Boone procured for his customers or for
himself such articles as linen, cloth, flannel, corduroy, chintz,
calico, broadcloth, and velvet at prices varying according to the
quality, from three to thirty shillings a yard; and there was also
evidently a ready market for "tea ware," knives and forks, scissors,
buttons, nails, and all kinds of hardware. Furs and skins usually appear
on the debit sides of the various accounts, ranging in value from the
skin of a beaver, worth eighteen shillings, or that of a bear worth ten,
to those of deer, wolves, coons, wildcats, and foxes, costing two to
four shillings apiece. Boone procured his goods from merchants in
Hagerstown and Williamsport, in Maryland, whither he and his sons guided
their own packtrains, laden with peltries and with kegs of ginseng, and
accompanied by droves of loose horses. He either followed some
well-beaten mountain trail or opened a new road through the wilderness
as seemed to him best at the moment. [Footnote: _Do., passim._]

Boone's creed in matters of morality and religion was as simple and
straightforward as his own character. Late in life he wrote to one of
his kinsfolk: "All the religion I have is to love and fear God, believe
in Jesus Christ, do all the good to my neighbors and myself that I can,
and do as little harm as I can help, and trust on God's mercy for the
rest." The old pioneer always kept the respect of red man and white, of
friend and foe, for he acted according to his belief. Yet there was one
evil to which he was no more sensitive than the other men of his time.

Among his accounts there is an entry recording his purchase, for another
man, of a negro woman for the sum of ninety pounds.