he Indians, and by his
missions to them had managed to keep the peace unbroken on more than one
occasion when a war would have been disastrous to the whites. He was
prosperous and successful in his private affairs; nevertheless, in 1779,
the restless craving for change and adventure surged so strongly in his
breast that it once more drove him forth to wander in the forest. In the
true border temper he determined to abandon the home he had made, and to
seek out a new one hundreds of miles farther in the heart of the
hunting-grounds of the red warriors.

The point pitched upon was the beautiful country lying along the great
bend of the Cumberland. Many adventurous settlers were anxious to
accompany Robertson, and, like him, to take their wives and children
with them into the new land. It was agreed that a small party of
explorers should go first in the early spring, to plant corn, that the
families might have it to eat when they followed in the fall.

The Cumberland Country.

The spot was already well known to hunters. Who had first visited it
cannot be said; though tradition has kept the names of several among the
many who at times halted there while on their wanderings. [Footnote: One
Stone or Stoner, perhaps Boon's old associate, is the first whose name
is given in the books. But in both Kentucky and Tennessee it is idle to
try to find out exactly who the first explorers were. They were
unlettered woodsmen; it is only by chance that some of their names have
been kept and others lost; the point to be remembered is that many
hunters were wandering over the land at the same time, that they drifted
to many different places, and that now and then an accident preserved
the name of some hunter and of some place he visited.] Old Kasper
Mansker and others had made hunting trips thither for ten years past;
and they had sometimes met the Creole trappers from the Illinois. When
Mansker first went to the Bluffs, [Footnote: The locality where
Nashborough was built, was sometimes spoken of as the Bluffs, and
sometimes as the French Lick.] in 1769, the buffaloes were more numerous
than he had ever seen them before; the ground literally shook under the
gallop of the mighty herds, they crowded in dense throngs round the
licks, and the forest resounded with their grunting bellows. He and
other woodsmen came back there off and on, hunting and trapping, and
living in huts made of buffalo hides; just such huts as the hunters
dwelt in