and that romantic river poetically celebrated in
the lines:

Swannanoa, nymph of beauty,
I would woo thee in my rhyme,
Wildest, brightest, loveliest river
Of our sunny Southern clime.
* * *
Gone forever from the borders
But immortal in thy name,
Are the Red Men of the forest
Be thou keeper of their fame!
Paler races dwell beside thee,
Celt and Saxon till thy lands
Wedding use unto thy beauty
Linking over thee their hands.

The long rambling excursions which Boone made through western
North Carolina and eastern Tennessee enabled him to explore every
nook and corner of the rugged and beautiful mountain region.
Among the companions and contemporaries with whom he hunted and
explored the country were his little son James and his brother
Jesse; the Linville who gave the name to the beautiful falls;
Julius Caesar Dugger, whose rock house stood near the head of Elk
Creek; and Nathaniel Gist, who described for him the lofty
gateway to Kentucky, through which Christopher Gist had passed in
1751. Boone had already heard of this gateway, from Findlay, and
it was one of the secret and cherished ambitions of his life to
scale the mountain wall of the Appalachians and to reach that
high portal of the Cumberland which beckoned to the mysterious
new Eden beyond. Although hunting was an endless delight to Boone
he was haunted in the midst of this pleasure, as was Kipling's
Explorer, by the lure of the undiscovered:

Till a voice as bad as conscience, rang interminable changes
On one everlasting whisper day and night repeated--so:
'Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the
ranges--'Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go.'

Of Boone's preliminary explorations for the land company known as
Richard Henderson and Company, an account has already been given;
and the delay in following them up has been touched on and in
part explained. Meanwhile Boone transferred his efforts for a
time to another field. Toward the close of the summer of 1765 a
party consisting of Major John Field, William Hill, one
Slaughter, and two others, all from Culpeper County, Virginia,
visited Boone and induced him to accompany them on the "long
Journey" to Florida, whither they were attracted by the liberal
offer of Colonel James Grant, governor of the eastern section,
the Florida of to-day. On this long and arduous expedition they
suffered many hardships and endured many privations, foun