acquisition and colonization of the trans-Alleghany. But while
the "Long Hunters" were in Tennessee and Kentucky the same region
was being more extensively and systematically explored by Daniel
Boone. To his life, character, and attainments, as the typical
"long hunter" and the most influential pioneer we may now turn
our particular attention.



CHAPTER IX. Daniel Boone and Wilderness Exploration

Here, where the hand of violence shed the blood of the innocent;
where the horrid yells of the savages, and the groans of the
distressed, sounded in our ears, we now hear the praises and
adorations of our Creator; where wretched wigwams stood, the
miserable abodes of savages, we behold the foundations of cities
laid, that, in all probability, will equal the glory of the
greatest upon earth.--Daniel Boone, 1781.


The wandering life of a border Nimrod in a surpassingly beautiful
country teeming with game was the ideal of the frontiersman of
the eighteenth century. AS early as 1728, while running the
dividing line between North Carolina and Virginia, William Byrd
encountered along the North Carolina frontier the typical figure
of the professional hunter: "a famous Woodsman, call'd
Epaphroditus Bainton. This Forester Spends all his time in
ranging the Woods, and is said to make great Havock among the
Deer, and other Inhabitants of the Forest, not much wilder than
himself." By the middle of the century, as he was threading his