eration that his son had gone
before him to that distant land; and that he might have been animated by
the hope of being reunited with him in his declining years.

The hunters represented to him that another Kentucky could be found
beyond the Father of Waters; that the game was abundant and would be
inexhaustible, until long after his earthly pilgrimage should end; that
the Spanish Government, desirous of promoting emigration, were ready to
make the most liberal grants of land to any man who would rear a cabin
and commence the cultivation of the soil; that over an expanse of
hundreds of miles of a sunny clime, and as luxurious soil as heart could
desire, he could select his broad acres with no fear of ever again being
ejected from his home.

These representations were resistless. Colonel Boone decided again to
become a wanderer to the far West, though it involved the relinquishment
of American citizenship and becoming a subject of the crown of Spain.

The year 1795 had now come, as Colonel Boone gathered up his few
household goods for the fourth great remove of his life. He was born on
the banks of the Delaware; his childhood was passed amidst the solitudes
of the Upper Skuylkill; his early manhood, where he reared his cabin and
took to it his worthy bride, was in North Carolina. Thence penetrating
the wilderness through adventures surpassing the dreams of romance, he
had passed many years amidst the most wonderful vicissitudes of quietude
and of agitation, of peace and of war, on the settlement of which he was
the father, at Boonesborough, in the valley of the Kentucky river.
Robbed of the possessions which he had earned a hundred times over, he
had sought a temporary residence at Point Pleasant, in Virginia. And
now, as he was approaching the termination of his three score years, he
was prepared to traverse the whole extent of Kentucky, from the
Alleghany border on the east, to the mighty flood of the Mississippi,
which then upon the west rushed with its turbid flood through an almost
unbroken solitude. It was a long, long journey.

We can only surmise the reasons why he did not float down the Ohio in a
flat boat. It may be said that he was entirely unaccustomed to boating.
And as it does not appear that any other families joined him in the
enterprise, his solitary boat would be almost certain to be attacked
and captured by some of the marauding bands which frequented the
northern banks of the Ohio.

Colonel Boon