herded the cattle and roamed through the almost untrodden wilderness. In
the winter his father let him hunt as soon as he had learned to handle a
gun. Daniel roamed far and wide across the Neversink mountain range to
the north and west of Monocacy Valley. He kept his family supplied with
great stock of game, and he cured the animals' skins. When he had a
sufficient store of skins he set out to market them in Philadelphia.
The city William Penn had founded on the banks of the Delaware was then
a small but prosperous village. It had been designed on the plan of a
checker-board, and most of the houses were surrounded by well-kept
gardens and flourishing orchards. Primitive as it was, the country boy
looked at it with wondering admiration. The houses, which were really
very simple, were palaces to him, when he thought of his father's log
cabin. The men and women, dressed in the latest importations brought
from London by sailing vessels, were figures of surpassing style and
elegance.
Life in Philadelphia seemed very rich to Daniel Boone; he liked to
loiter along the streets and look in at the wide gardens and the
comfortable white porches, and he liked to stop and watch a city chaise
drive by, with a man in a claret or plum-colored suit and a woman in a
bright taffeta gown. They were almost a different race from the
buckskin-clad people of the wilderness from whom he came.
Yet the frontier was in fact very near to Philadelphia. A few outlying
fields about the town alone separated it from the wild forest; guards
were ever ready to give warning of danger from Indians on the war-path,
and friendly Indians were constantly met with on the streets. There were
many fur-traders, too, who brought their goods to market as Daniel did,
and one was constantly meeting some rough-clad trapper in from the
wilds for a few days of city life.
Daniel wandered about slowly, enjoying everything he saw with a boy's
delight in the unusual, and finally exchanging the skins he had brought
with him for things he needed in his hunting,--long, sharp-edged knives,
flints, powder and lead for his gun.
When Daniel was fourteen his older brother married a young Quakeress who
had received a better education than any of her neighbors. She liked
Daniel and began to teach him to read and to figure. He was not a
brilliant scholar, but he learned enough to do rough surveying work, and
to write letters which expressed what he meant although spelled on a
plan of his own. At about the same time Squire Boone started a
blacksmith shop, and Daniel added this work to what he already did as
herdsman and hunter. The work in iron gave him a chance to plan and
carry out new ideas of his in regard to guns and traps.
The Pennsylvania country was gradually filling up, and in 1750, when
Daniel was fifteen, Squire Boone began to wonder where his eleven
children would find farming land. Directly westward rose the Alleghany
Mountains, a high barrier to pioneers, and report said that the Indians
who lived just beyond them were particularly fierce. Southwest, however,
lay alluring valleys, broad meadows between the Appalachian ranges that
stretched from Pennsylvania through Virginia and the Carolinas into
far-off Georgia. Men who wanted new and bigger lands went south into the
Blue Ridge country, and some near neighbors of the Boones had pushed on
to the Yadkin Valley which lay in northwestern North Carolina. Reports
came back of the splendid lands they found there.
Squire Boone was by nature a pioneer, a man who loved to explore new
lands and build new settlements, and so he decided to venture into this
new and promising country. There is a world of romance in such a journey
as this the Boones now undertook, and they were but one of many thousand
families who were pushing west and south, laying the foundations of a
great land.
Mrs. Boone and the younger children were safely stowed away in
canvas-covered wagons, such as were later known as "prairie schooners,"
and Squire Boone with Daniel and the older boys rode horseback, driving
the cattle before them, and forming an armed guard about the caravan.
They crossed the ford at Harper's Ferry and went on up the rich
Shenandoah Valley. At night camp was pitched by a spring and the wagons
drawn up in a circle about the cattle. A camp-fire was built and the
game which Daniel as huntsman had shot was cooked for supper. Sentries
were posted, and all night long father and sons took turns guarding
against attack from Indians.
Think what a prospect lay before the pioneers! A vast tract of the
fairest and richest land in the world waiting to be claimed from the
wilderness. They had only to choose and take. But the zeal for
exploration led them on, over the table-land of western Virginia,
through the primeval forests, up the currents of the many rivers that
flow toward the Ohio, and so on to the south and west.
As they neared the Yadkin they came to a splendid stretch of land; a
high prairie, with fine grass for cattle, and near at hand streams edged
with cane-brake. Daniel saw such fish and game as he had never seen
before, fruit to be had for the taking, and a cattle range only bounded
by the distant western mountains. But as he rode into the splendid
prairie he thought more of those distant blue-topped heights than of the
near-by meadows; he knew that on and on westward lay a great unknown
country and already he felt it call to him to be explored.
Squire Boone chose land at a place called Buffalo Lick near the Yadkin
River, and built a home there. Daniel now spent little time about the
farm, for he had learned the value of skins in the Atlantic cities.
Buffalo were plentiful all about the settlement, and he could kill four
or five deer in a day. It was in truth a hunter's paradise. In a single
day he could kill enough bears to make a ton of what was called
bear-bacon; there were numberless wolves, panthers, and wildcats;
turkeys, beavers, otters and smaller animals ran wild all about him, and
from morn till night he was out hunting in the woods.
But life was not all sport for the young Boones. Various Indian tribes,
the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and the Shawnese hunted not far away, and
although they were often on friendly terms with the whites, and came to
the settlement to trade, sometimes they put on their war paint, and
descended on the small frontier homes with full fury.
As the French came down from the north disputing this new land with the
English settlers they made the Indians their allies, and the border
warfare grew more bitter. Finally the English general Braddock decided
to march west himself and try to teach the French and Indians a lesson.
It was not likely that such a sturdy youth as Daniel Boone could resist
the desire to march against the French. The expedition promised him a
chance to push farther into that wild western country, if nothing else,
and so he joined Braddock's small army with about a hundred other North
Carolina frontiersmen. Daniel was made chief wagoner and blacksmith.
General Braddock knew nothing of Indian warfare, and the little
expedition proved an easy target for their enemies. The cumbersome and
heavily laden baggage wagons were a great handicap to them. The English
regulars, the frontiersmen, and the baggage train were caught in the
deep ravine of Turtle Creek, a few miles away from Pittsburg, and
suddenly set upon by ambushed Indians commanded by French officers. Many
of the drivers, caught in the trap, were killed. Daniel, however,
contrived to cut the traces of his team, and mounting one of the horses,
escaped down and out of the ravine under a fire of shot and arrows.
The Indians pursued the fugitives, laying waste the borders of
Pennsylvania and Virginia, but not following as far south as the Yadkin.
Daniel reached home, and set to work to strengthen the settlement's ties
of friendship with the two tribes of the neighborhood, the Catawbas and
the Cherokees. With their aid he was able to provide sufficient
safeguard against the Northern tribes.
[Illustration: DANIEL BOONE'S FIRST VIEW OF KENTUCKY]
While he was with Braddock's army Daniel had met a man named John
Finley, who fired his imagination with stories of his wanderings in the
west. He was a fur-trader, and his passion for hunting had already led
him into the Kentucky wilderness as far as the Falls of the Ohio River,
where Louisville now stands. He had had countless adventures with
Indians, with wild animals, and with the perils of stream and forest.
Young Boone drank in the stories eagerly, and resolved that some day he
would himself go out to explore the west.
Daniel had now come to manhood. For a time he stayed in the Yadkin
Valley, but the call to follow the trail of the buffaloes and the
westward moving Shawnese was clear in his ears. Dangerous days of Indian
fighting on the border held him close at home, but the time came when he
could resist the call no longer. He left home and took his way through
the uncharted hills and forests to Kentucky.
At times he fought for his life with roving Indians, and at times he
captained some small English garrison beset by the same red men. He won
great renown as an Indian fighter, as a hunter, as an intrepid explorer.
The little town of Boonesborough was named for him, and he defended it
through a long and perilous siege. But so soon as men came and built
homes and staked out farms Boone must be moving west. What he sought was
the wilderness; he was happiest in the great recesses of the woods, or
blazing his own trail across untrodden prairies.
He led the vanguard into North Carolina, into West Virginia, into
Kentucky, and then into Missouri. He is a splendid example of the man
who must go first to prepare the way for others, in every way the best
type of those brave, hardy pioneers who were claiming the continent for
English-speaking people. The things he had most desired as a boy he most
desired in manhood, the rough life of a new country and the struggle to
overcome the perils of the wild.
VIII
John Paul Jones
The Boy of the Atlantic: 1747-1792
The summer afternoon was fair, and the waves that rolled upon the north
shore of Solway Firth in the western Lowlands of Scotland were calm and
even. But the tide was coming in, and inch by inch was covering the
causeway that led from shore to a high rock some hundred yards away. The
rock was bare of vegetation, and sheer on the landward side, but on the
face toward the sea were rough jutting points that would give a climber
certain footholds, and near the top smooth ledges.
On one or two of these ledges sea-gulls had built their nests, tucked in
under projecting points where they would be sheltered from wind and
rain. Now the gulls would sweep in from sea, curving in great circles
until they reached their homes, and then would sit on the ledge calling
to their mates across the water. Except for the cries of the gulls,
however, the rock was very quiet. The lazy regular beat of the waves
about its base was very soothing. On the longest ledge, below the
sea-gulls' nests, lay a boy about twelve years old, sound asleep, his
face turned toward the ocean.
Either the gulls' cries or the sun, now slanting in the west, disturbed
him. He did not open his eyes, but he clenched his fists, and muttered
incoherently. Presently with a start he awoke. He rubbed his eyes, and
then sat up. "What a queer dream!" he said aloud.
The ledge where he sat was not a very safe place. There was scarcely
room for him to move, and directly below him was the sea. But this boy
was quite as much at home on high rocks or in the water as he was on
land, and he was very fond of looking out for distant sailing vessels
and wondering where they might be bound.
He glanced along the north shore to the little fishing hamlet of
Arbigland where he lived. He saw that the tide had come in rapidly while
he slept, and that the path to the shore was now covered. He stood up
and stretched his bare arms, brown with sunburn, high over his head.
Then he started to climb down from the ledge by the jutting points of
rock.
He was as sure-footed as any mountaineer. His clothes were old, so
neither rock nor sea could do them much harm; his feet were bare. He was
short but very broad, and his muscles were strong and supple. When he
came to the foot of the rock he stood a moment, hunting for the deepest
pool at its base, then, loosing his hold, he dove into the water.
In a few seconds he was up again, floating on his back; and a little
later he struck out, swimming hand over hand, toward a sandy beach to
the south.
A young man, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant in the British navy,
stood on the beach, watching the boy swim. When the latter had landed
and shaken the water from him much as a dog would, the man approached
him. "Where on earth did you come from, John Paul?" he asked with a
laugh. "The first thing I knew I saw you swimming in from sea."
"I was out on the rock asleep," said the boy. "The tide came up and cut
me off. And oh, Lieutenant Pearson, I had the strangest dream! I dreamt
I was in the middle of a great sea-fight. I was captain of a ship, and
her yard-arms were on fire, and we were pouring broadsides into the
enemy, afraid any minute that we'd sink. How we did fight that ship!"
The young officer's eyes glowed. "And I hope you may some day, John!" he
exclaimed.
"But the strangest part was that our ship didn't fly the English flag,"
said the boy. "At the masthead was a flag I'd never seen, red and white
with a blue field filled with stars in the corner. What country's flag
is that?"
Pearson thought for a moment. "There's no such flag," he said finally.
"I know them all, and there's none like that. The rest of your dream may
come true, but not that about the flag. Come, let's be walking back to
Arbigland."
Although John Paul's father came of peaceful farmer and fisher folk who
lived about Solway Firth, his mother had been a "Highland lassie,"
descended from one of the fighting clans in the Grampian Hills. The boy
had much of the Highlander's love of wild adventure, and found it hard
to live the simple life of the fishing village. The sea appealed to him,
and he much preferred it to the small Scotch parish school. His family
were poor, and as soon as he was able he was set to steering fishing
yawls and hauling lines. At twelve he was as sturdy and capable as most
boys at twenty.
Many men in Arbigland had heard John Paul beg his father to let him
cross the Solway to the port of Whitehaven and ship on some vessel bound
for America, where his older brother William had found a new home. But
his father saw no opening for his younger son in such a life. All the
way back to town that afternoon the boy told Lieutenant Pearson of his
great desire, and the young officer said he would try to help him.
The boy's chance, however, came in another way. A few days later it
chanced that Mr. James Younger, a big ship-owner, was on the
landing-place of Arbigland when some of the villagers caught sight of a
small fishing yawl beating up against a stiff northeast squall, trying
to gain the shelter of the little tidal-creek that formed the harbor of
the town.
Mr. Younger looked long at the boat and then shook his head. "I don't
think she'll do it," he said dubiously.
Yet the boat came on, and he could soon see that the only crew were a
man and a boy. The boy was steering, handling the sheets and giving
orders, while the man simply sat on the gunwale to trim the boat.
"Who's the boy?" asked the ship-owner.
"John Paul," said a bystander. "That's his father there."
Mr. Younger looked at the man pointed out, who was standing near, and
who did not seem to be in the least alarmed. "Are you the lad's father?"
he asked.
The man looked up and nodded. "Yes, that's my boy John conning the
boat," said he. "He'll fetch her in. This isn't much of a squall for
him!"
The father spoke with truth. The boy handled his small craft with such
skill that he soon had her alongside the wharf. As soon as John Paul had
landed Mr. Younger stepped up to the father and asked to be introduced
to the son. Then the ship-owner told him how much he had admired his
seamanship, and asked if he would care to sail as master's apprentice in
a new vessel he owned, which was fitting out for a voyage to Virginia
and the West Indies. The boy's eyes danced with delight; he begged his
father to let him go, and finally Mr. Paul consented. The
twelve-year-old boy had won his wish to go to sea.
A few days later the brig _Friendship_ sailed from Whitehaven, with
small John Paul on board, and after a slow voyage which lasted
thirty-two days dropped anchor in the Rappahannock River of Virginia.
The life of a colonial trader was very pleasant in 1760. The
sailing-vessels usually made a triangular voyage, taking some six months
to go from England to the colonies, then to the West Indies, and so east
again. About three of the six months were spent at the small settlements
on shore, discharging goods from England, taking on board cotton and
tobacco, and bartering with the merchants.
The Virginians, who lived on their great plantations with many servants,
were the most hospitable people in the world, always eager to entertain
a stranger, and the English sailors were given the freedom of the shore.
The _Friendship_ anchored a short distance down the river from where
John Paul's older brother lived, and the boy immediately went to see him
and stayed as his guest for some time.
This brother William had been adopted by a wealthy planter named Jones,
and the latter was delighted with the young John Paul, and tried to get
him to leave the sailor's life and settle on the Rappahannock. But much
as John liked the easy life of the plantation, the fine riding horses,
the wide fields and splendid rivers, the call of the sea was dearer to
him, and when the _Friendship_ dropped down the Rappahannock bound for
Tobago and the Barbadoes he was on board of her.
Those were adventurous days for sailors and merchants. Money was to be
made in many ways, and consciences were not overcareful as to the ways.
The prosperous traders of Virginia did not mind taking an interest in
some ocean rover bound on pirate's business, or in the more lawful
slave-trade with the west coast of Africa. For a time, however, young
John Paul sailed for Mr. Younger, and was finally paid by being given a
one-sixth interest in a ship called _King George's Packet_.
The boy was now first mate, and trade with England being dull, he and
the captain decided to try the slave-trade. For two years they made
prosperous voyages between Jamaica and the coast of Guinea, helping to
found the fortunes of some of the best known families of America by
importing slaves.
After a year, however, John Paul tired of the business, and sold his
share of the ship to the captain for about one thousand guineas. He was
not yet twenty-one, but his seafaring life had already made him fairly
well-to-do. He planned to go home and see his family in Scotland, and
took passage in the brig _John o' Gaunt_.
Life on shipboard was full of perils then, and very soon after the brig
had cleared the Windward Islands the terrible scourge of yellow fever
was found to be on the vessel. Within a few days the captain, the mate,
and all of the crew but five had died of the disease. John Paul was
fully exposed to it, but he and the five men escaped it. He was the only
one of those left who knew anything about navigation, so he took
command, and after a stormy passage, with a crew much too small to
handle the brig, he managed to bring her safely to Whitehaven with all
her cargo. He handled her as skilfully as he had the small yawl in
Solway Firth.
The owners of the _John o' Gaunt_ were delighted and gave John Paul and
his five sailors the ten per cent. share of the cargo which the salvage
laws entitled them to. In addition they offered him the command of a
splendid full-rigged new merchantman which was to sail between England
and America, and a tenth share of all profits. It was a very fine offer
to a man who had barely come of age, but the youth had shown that he
had few equals as a mariner.
Good fortune shone upon him. He had no sooner sailed up the Rappahannock
again and landed at the plantation where his brother lived than he
learned that the rich old Virginian, William Jones, had recently died
and in his will had named him as one of his heirs. He had always
cherished a fancy for the sturdy, black-haired boy who had made him that
visit. The will provided that John Paul should add the planter's name to
his own. The young captain did not object to this, and so henceforth he
was known as John Paul Jones.
Scores of stories are told of the young captain's adventures. He loved
danger, and it was his nature to enjoy a fight with men or with the
elements. On a voyage to Jamaica he met with serious trouble. Fever
again reduced the crew to six men, and Jones was the only officer able
to be on deck. A huge negro named Maxwell tried to start a mutiny and
capture the ship for his own uses. He rushed at Jones, and the latter
had to seize a belaying-pin and hit him over the head. The man fell
badly hurt and soon after reaching Jamaica died.
Jones gave himself up to the authorities and was tried for murder on the
high seas. He said to the court: "I had two brace of loaded pistols in
my belt, and could easily have shot him. I struck with a belaying-pin in
preference, because I hoped that I might subdue him without killing
him." He was acquitted, and soon after offered command of a new ship
built to trade with India.
[Illustration: PAUL JONES CAPTURING THE "SERAPIS"]
The charm of life in Virginia appealed more and more strongly to the
sailor. He liked the new country, the society of the young cities along
the Atlantic coast, and he spent less time on the high seas and more
time fishing and hunting on his own land and in Chesapeake Bay. He might
have settled quietly into such prosperous retirement had not the
minutemen of Concord startled the new world into stirring action.
John Paul Jones loved America and he loved ships. Consequently he was
one of the very first to offer his services in building a new navy.
Congress was glad to have him; he was known as a man of the greatest
courage and of supreme nautical skill.
On September 23, 1779, Paul Jones, on board the American ship _Bon Homme
Richard_, met the British frigate _Serapis_ off the English coast. A
battle of giants followed, for both ships were manned by brave crews and
commanded by extraordinarily skilful officers. The short, black-haired,
agile American commander saw his ship catch fire, stood on his
quarterdeck while the blazing spars, sails and rigging fell about him,
while his men were mowed down by the terrific broadsides of the
_Serapis_, and calmly directed the fire of shot at the enemy.
Terribly as the _Bon Homme Richard_ suffered, the _Serapis_ was in still
worse plight. Two-thirds of her men were killed or wounded when Paul
Jones gave the signal to board her. The Americans swarmed over the
enemy's bulwarks, and, armed with pistol and cutlass, cleared the deck.
The captain of the _Serapis_ fought his ship to the last, but when he
saw the Americans sweeping everything before them and already heading
for the quarterdeck, he himself seized the ensign halyards and struck
his flag. Both ships were in flames, and the smoke was so thick that it
was some minutes before men realized his surrender. There was little to
choose between the two vessels; each was a floating mass of wreckage.
A little later the English captain went on board the _Bon Homme Richard_
and tendered his sword to the young American. The latter looked hard at
the English officer. "Captain Pearson?" he asked questioningly.
The other bowed.
"Ah, I thought so. I am John Paul Jones, once small John Paul of
Arbigland in the Firth. Do you remember me?"
Pearson looked at the smoke-grimed face, the keen black eyes, the fine
figure. "I shouldn't have known you. Yes, I remember now."
Paul Jones took the sword that was held out to him, and asked one of his
midshipmen to escort the British captain to his cabin. He could not help
smiling as a curious recollection came to him. He looked up at the
masthead above him. There floated a flag bearing thirteen red and white
stripes and a blue corner filled with stars. It was the very flag of his
dream as a boy.
Thus it was that the sturdy Scotch boy, full of the daring spirit of his
Highland ancestors, became the great sea-fighter of a new country, and
ultimately wrote his name in history as the Father of the American
Navy.
IX
Mozart
The Boy of Salzburg: 1756-1791