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r camp-fire wait until the returning sun invited them to resume their journey. Or if they came to some of nature's favored haunts, where Eden-like attractions were spread around them, on the borders of the lake, by the banks of the stream, or beneath the brow of the mountain, they would tarry for a few days, reveling in delights, which they both had the taste to appreciate. In this way, they very thoroughly explored the upper valley of the Cumberland river. For some reason not given, they preferred to return north several hundred miles to the Kentucky river, as the seat of their contemplated settlement. The head waters of this stream are near those of the Cumberland. It however flows through the very heart of Kentucky, till it enters the Ohio river, midway between the present cities of Cincinnati and Louisville. It was in the month of March that they reached the Kentucky river on their return. For some time they wandered along its banks searching for the more suitable situation for the location of a colony. "The exemption of these men," said W. H. Bogart, "from assault by the Indians during all this long period of seven months, in which, armed and on horseback, they seem to have roamed just where they chose, is most wonderful. It has something about it which seems like a special interposition of Providence, beyond the ordinary guardianship over the progress of man. On the safety of these men rested the hope of a nation. A very distinguished authority has declared, that without Boone, the settlements could not have been upheld and the conquest of Kentucky would have been reserved for the emigrants of the nineteenth century." Boone having now, after an absence of nearly two years, apparently accomplished the great object of his mission; having, after the most careful and extensive exploration, selected such a spot as he deemed most attractive for the future home of his family, decided to return to the Yadkin and make preparations for their emigration across the mountains. To us now, such a movement seems to indicate an almost insane boldness and recklessness. To take wife and children into a pathless wilderness filled with unfriendly savages, five hundred miles from any of the settlements of civilization, would seem to invite death. A family could not long be concealed. Their discovery by the Indians would be almost the certain precursor of their destruction. Boone, in his autobiography, says in allusion to this haza
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