No feeling, but a devotion to their favorite pursuits and modes of life,
stronger than the fear of abandonment, in the interminable and pathless
woods, to all forms of misery and death, could ever have enabled them to
persist in braving the danger and distress that stared them in the face
at every advancing step.

Finley was invited by Boone permanently to share the comfort of his
fire-side,--for it was now winter. It needs no exercise of fancy to
conjecture their subjects of conversation during the long evening. The
bitter wintry wind burst upon their dwelling only to enhance the
cheerfulness of the blazing fire in the huge chimneys, by the contrast
of the inclemency of nature without.

It does not seem natural, at first thought, that a season, in which
nature shows herself stern and unrelenting, should be chosen, as that in
which plans are originated and matured for settling the destiny of life.
But it was during this winter, that Boone and Finley arranged all the
preliminaries of their expedition, and agreed to meet on the first of
May in the coming spring; and with some others, whom they hoped to
induce to join them for greater strength and safety, to set forth
together on an expedition into Kentucky.

Boone's array of arguments, to influence those whom he wished to share
this daring enterprise with him, was tinctured with the coloring of rude
poetry. "They would ascend," he said, "the unnamed mountains, whose
green heads rose not far from their former hunting-grounds, since fences
and inclosures had begun to surround them on all sides, shutting up the
hunter from his free range and support. The deer had fled from the sound
of the axe, which levelled the noble trees under whose shade they could
repose from the fatigues of pursuit. The springs and streams among the