rt for the remainder of
his days.

"These annual gatherings are often the scene of bloody duels, for over
their cups and cards no men are more quarrelsome than your mountaineers.
Rifles at twenty paces settle all differences, and as may be imagined,
the fall of one or other of the combatants is certain, or, as sometimes
happens, both fall at the same fire."[H]

[Footnote H: Ruxton's Travels.]

CHAPTER XIV.

_Conclusion._

Colonel Boone Appeals to Congress--Complimentary Resolutions of the
Legislature of Kentucky.--Death of Mrs. Boone.--Catholic
Liberality.--Itinerant Preachers.--Grant by Congress to Colonel
Boone.--The Evening of his Days.--Personal Appearance.--Death and
Burial.--Transference of the Remains of Mr. and Mrs. Boone to Frankfort,
Kentucky.

Colonel Boone having lost all his property, sent in a memorial, by the
advice of his friends, to the Legislature of Kentucky, and also another
to Congress. Kentucky was now a wealthy and populous State, and was not
at all indisposed to recognise the invaluable services she had received
from Colonel Boone. In allusion to these services Governor Moorehead
said:

"It is not assuming too much to declare, that without Colonel Boone, in
all probability the settlements could not have been upheld; and the
conquest of Kentucky might have been reserved for the emigrants of the
nineteenth century."

What obstacle stood in the way of a liberal grant of land by the
Kentucky Legislature we do not know. We simply know that by a unanimous
vote of that body, the following preamble and resolution were passed:

"The Legislature of Kentucky, taking into view the many eminent services
rendered by Colonel Boone, in exploring and settling the western
country, from which great advantages have resulted, not only to this
State, but to this country in general, and that from circumstances over
which he had no control, he is now reduced to poverty; not having, so
far as appears, an acre of land out of the vast territory he has been a
great instrument in peopling; believing also that it is as unjust as it
is impolitic, that useful enterprise and eminent services should go
unrewarded by a Government where merit confers the only distinction; and
having sufficient reason to believe that a grant of ten thousand acres
of land, which he claims in Upper Louisiana, would have been confirmed
by the Spanish Government, had not said territory passed by cession into
the hands of the Genera