way through the Carolina piedmont zone, the hunter's paradise of
the Yadkin and Catawba country, Bishop Spangenberg found ranging
there many hunters, living like Indians, who killed thousands of
deer each year and sold the skins in the local markets or to the
fur-traders from Virginia whose heavy pack-trains with their
tinkling bells constantly traversed the course of the Great
Trading Path. The superlative skill of one of these hunters, both
as woodsman and marksman, was proverbial along the border. The
name of Daniel Boone became synonymous with expert huntsmanship
and almost uncanny wisdom in forest lore. The bottoms of the
creek near the Boone home, three miles west of present
Mocksville, contained a heavy growth of beech, which dropped
large quantities of its rich nuts or mast, greatly relished by
bears; and this creek received its name, Bear Creek, because
Daniel and his father killed in its rich bottoms ninety-nine
bears in a single hunting-season. After living for a time with
his young wife, Rebecca Bryan, in a cabin in his father's yard,
Daniel built a home of his own upon a tract of land, purchased
from his father on October 12, 1759, and lying on Sugar Tree, a
tributary of Dutchman's Creek. Here he dwelt for the next five
years, with the exception of the period of his temporary removal
to Virginia during the terrible era of the Indian war. Most of
his time during the autumn and winter, when he was not engaged in
wagoning or farming, he spent in long hunting-journeys into the
mountains to the west and northwest. During the hunting-season of
1760 he struck deeper than ever before into the western mountain
region and encamped in a natural rocky shelter amidst fine
hunting-grounds, in what is now Washington County in east
Tennessee. Of the scores of inscriptions commemorative of his
hunting-feats, which Boone with pardonable pride was accustomed