In May, Squire Boone fared forth, taking with him the
season's catch of beaver, otter, and deerskins to exchange in the
North Carolinian trading houses for more supplies; and Daniel was
left solitary in Kentucky.
Now followed those lonely explorations which gave Daniel Boone
his special fame above all Kentucky's pioneers. He was by no
means the first white man to enter Kentucky; and when he did
enter, it was as one of a party, under another man's guidance--if
we except his former disappointing journey into the laurel
thickets of Floyd County. But these others, barring Stewart, who
fell there, turned back when they met with loss and hardship and
measured the certain risks against the possible gains. Boone, the
man of imagination, turned to wild earth as to his kin. His
genius lay in the sense of oneness he felt with his wilderness
environment. An instinct he had which these other men, as
courageous perhaps as he, did not possess.
Never in all the times when he was alone in the woods and had no
other man's safety or counsel to consider, did he suffer ill
fortune. The nearest approach to trouble that befell him when
alone occurred one day during this summer when some Indians
emerged from their green shelter and found him, off guard for the
moment, standing on a cliff gazing with rapture over the vast
rolling stretches of Kentucky.
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