“But where are the keys of the town?”
“I have delivered them to my master, King Alfonso, and of him you may get them. Now I ride on, and we shall meet no more.”
“Not so,” said the king. “You shall hold the town for me and be its governor in my name.”
The followers of the king murmured, and complained at his thus rewarding a rebel. “He is no longer a rebel,” said King John; “such men when won, become the best of subjects.”
—Charles E. A. Gayarré.
DANIEL BOONE.
I.
The settlement of the wilderness beyond the Alleghany Mountains was promoted by native pioneers. In his peaceful habitation on the banks of the Yadkin River in North Carolina, Daniel Boone, the illustrious hunter, had heard Finley, a trader, describe a tract of land, west of Virginia, as the richest in North America, or in the world. In May, 1769, leaving his wife and offspring, having Finley as his pilot, and four others as companions, the young man, of about three and twenty, wandered forth through the wilderness of America “in quest of the country of Kentucky,” known to the savages as “the dark and bloody ground.” After a long and fatiguing journey through mountain ranges, the party found themselves in June on the Red River, a tributary of the Kentucky, and from the top of an eminence surveyed with delight the beautiful plain that stretched to the northwest. Here they built their shelter and began to reconnoiter the country, and to hunt.