ermed, without the aid of poetry, their natural and more
congenial atmosphere. The distinguished and resolute forester who
first penetrated the wilds of the latter state, was of the number. This
adventurous and venerable patriarch was now seen making his last remove;
placing the "endless river" between him and the multitude his own
success had drawn around him, and seeking for the renewal of enjoyments
which were rendered worthless in his eyes, when trammelled by the forms
of human institutions.[+]

[*] All the states admitted to the American Union, since the
revolution, are called New States, with the exception of Vermont:
that had claims before the war; which were not, however, admitted
until a later day.

[+] Colonel Boon, the patriarch of Kentucky. This venerable and hardy
pioneer of civilisation emigrated to an estate three hundred miles
west of the Mississippi, in his ninety-second year, because he
found a population of ten to the square mile, inconveniently
crowded!

In the pursuit of adventures such as these, men are ordinarily governed
by their habits or deluded by their wishes. A few, led by the phantoms
of hope, and ambitious of sudden affluence, sought the mines of the
virgin territory; but by far the greater portion of the emigrants
were satisfied to establish themselves along the margins of the
larger water-courses, content with the rich returns that the generous,
alluvial, bottoms of the rivers never fail to bestow on the most
desultory industry. In this manner were communities formed with magical
rapidity; and most of those who witnessed the purchase of the empty
empire, have lived to see already a populous and sovereign state,
parcelled from its inhabitants, and received into the bosom of the
national Union, on terms of political equality.

The incidents and scenes which are connected with this legend, occurred
in the earliest periods of the enterprises which have led to so great
and so speedy a result.

The harvest of the first year of our possession had long been passed,
and the fading foliage of a few scattered trees was already beginning to
exhibit the hues and tints of autumn, when a train of wagons issued from
the bed of a dry rivulet, to pursue its course across the undulating
surface, of what, in the language of the country of which we write, is
called a "rolling prairie." The vehicles, loaded with household goods
and implements of husbandry, the few str