_"Here once Boone trod--the hardy Pioneer--
The only white man in the wilderness."_
In a late work entitled "Sketches of Western Adventure," a most
interesting account is given of Boone, whose passion for a sylvan life
was intense. Like Leather-stocking, it would seem that he always got
lost in the clearing, and that only in the forest he knew his way and
felt free and unincumbered. Then, like McGregor, "standing on his
native heath," he feared no difficulties or dangers. Byron, in his Don
Juan, calls him "The man of Ross run wild," and says, that he "killed
nothing but a bear or buck," but not so; he had many deadly encounters
with the Indians, and was repeatedly taken prisoner by them; but he
effected his escapes with great tact. The author of "Sketches of
Western Adventure," speaking of him, alone in the wilderness, says,
"The wild and solitary grandeur of the country around him, where not
a tree had been cut, nor a house erected, was to him an inexhaustible
source of admiration and delight; and he says himself, that some of
the most rapturous moments of his life were spent in those lonely
rambles. The utmost caution was necessary to avoid the savages, and
scarcely less to escape the ravenous hunger of the wolves that prowled
nightly around him in immense numbers. He was compelled frequently to
shift his lodging, and by undoubted signs, saw that the Indians had
repeatedly visited his hut during his absence. He sometimes lay in
canebrakes, without fire, and heard the yells of the Indians around
him. Fortunately, however, he never encountered them."
Mr. John A. McClung is the author of the above mentioned work. This
gentleman is also the author of a novel, entitled "Camden," which has
not received half the notice it deserved.
Mr. Flint has now in the press a life of Boone, which will soon be
published. I am indebted to him for the following graphic note,
concerning Boone:
"This extraordinary man, whose birth is said to have been in
Maryland, in Virginia, and in North Carolina, was in fact born in
neither; but in Pennsylvania, in Buck's County, about twenty miles
from Philadelphia. When he was three years old, his father removed to
a water of the Schuylkill, not far from Reading. When he was
thirteen years old, his father removed thence to the South Yadkin,
North Carolina; and in the midst of the bushy hills of that State the
character of this Nimrod was developed.
"No historical facts are better attested, than those, to which
allusion is here made. The native sagacity, the robust hardihood, the
invincible courage and spirit of endurance, put forth on all occasions
by the pioneer of Kentucky, were, perhaps, never surpassed by any
character on record. These traits were admirably balanced and relieved
by a disposition peculiarly mild and gentle. In his old age he removed
from Kentucky to the banks of the Missouri. The portrait of him in the
capitol is said not to be a correct likeness. He was of the middle
stature, of prodigious strength and swiftness, with sandy hair, and a
bright complexion, a bold, prominent forehead, aquiline nose and
compressed lips. There was a peculiar brightness, an unquenchable
elasticity and force visible in his forehead and his eye, even under
the frost of eighty winters. His old age was not cheered by affluence,
but his departure was neither unhonored, nor unsung. No American
character seems to have more chained interest and attention. His life
constitutes the theme of Mr. Bryant's 'Mountain Muse,' and he is one
among the few, whom lord Byron honored with unalloyed eulogy, in seven
or eight of the happiest stanzas of Don Juan."