" Boone was always fond of carving his exploits on
trees, and his wanderings have been traced largely by his
arboreal publications. In the next year (1761) he went with
Waddell's rangers when they marched with the army to the final
subjugation of the Cherokee.
That Boone and his family were back on the border in the new
cabin shortly after the end of the war, we gather from the fact
that in 1764 he took his little son James, aged seven, on one of
his long hunting excursions. From this time dates the intimate
comradeship of father and son through all the perils of the
wilderness, a comradeship to come to its tragic end ten years
later when, as we shall see, the seventeen-year-old lad fell
under the red man's tomahawk as his father was leading the first
settlers towards Kentucky. In the cold nights of the open camp,
as Daniel and James lay under the frosty stars, the father kept
the boy warm snuggled to his breast under the broad flap of his
hunting shirt. Sometimes the two were away from home for months
together, and Daniel declared little James to be as good a
woodsman as his father.
Meanwhile fascinating accounts of the new land of Florida, ceded
to Britain by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, had leaked into the
Back Country; and in the winter of 1765 Boone set off southward
on horseback with, seven companions.
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