a sated millionaire.

Two or three horses would convey upon their backs all their household
goods. There were Indian trails and streets, so called, made by the
buffaloes, as in large numbers they had followed each other, selecting
by a wonderful instinct their path from one feeding ground to another,
through cane-brakes, around morasses, and over mountains through the
most accessible defiles. Along these trails or streets, Boone could take
his peaceful route without any danger of mistaking his way. Every mile
would be opening to him new scenes of grandeur and beauty. Should night
come, or a storm set in, a few hours' labor with his axe would rear for
him not only a comfortable, but a cheerful tent with its warm and
sheltered interior, with the camp-fire crackling and blazing before it.
His wife and his children not only afforded him all the society his
peculiar nature craved, but each one was a helper, knowing exactly what
to do in this picnic excursion through the wilderness. Wherever he might
stop for the night or for a few days, his unerring rifle procured for
him viands which might tempt the appetite of the epicure. There are many
even in civilized life who will confess, that for them, such an
excursion would present attractions such as are not to be found in the
banqueting halls at Windsor Castle, or in the gorgeous saloons of
Versailles.

Daniel Boone, in imagination, was incessantly visiting the land beyond
the mountains, and longing to explore its mysteries. Whether he would
find the ocean there or an expanse of lakes and majestic rivers, or
boundless prairies, or the unbroken forest, he knew not. Whether the
region were crowded with Indians, and if so, whether they would be found
friendly or hostile, and whether game roamed there in greater variety
and in larger abundance than on the Atlantic side of the great barrier,
were questions as yet all unsolved. But these questions Daniel Boone
pondered in silence, night and day.

A gentleman who nearly half a century ago visited one of these frontier
dwellings, very romantically situated amidst the mountains of Western
Virginia, has given us a pencil sketch of the habitation which we here
introduce. The account of the visit is also so graphic that we cannot
improve it by giving it in any language but his own. This settler had
passed through the first and was entering upon the second stage of
pioneer life:

"Towards the close of an autumnal day, when traveling thr