They were surrounded by hostile savages, who came and went like shadows, who found their way as straight as the flight of a carrier pigeon through countless miles of trackless forest; who appeared and disappeared as quickly and completely as the elfs of the fabled fairy-lands. But the instinct of self-preservation sharpened their wits; no man sleeps soundly when danger threatens.
They learned first the secrets by which the Indian made his way from place to place, and tracked his foe for vengeance or his game for sustenance.
They quickly discovered how by training and vigilance the eye became quick, the ear alert, and the touch sensitive.
A crushed blade of grass or a weed, a broken twig, a bent bough, all these things were to the Indian as they are to Sherlock Holmes, sufficient to construct a theory as to the character and numbers of those he pursued.
ROBERT S. S. BADEN-POWELL, MAJOR GENERAL ENGLISH ARMY.
From him the white man quickly learned his lore, but he could add to it something which instantly made him the superior of the red man, and that was, a higher order of intelligence and reason, and that conquered the aborigine and drove him farther and still farther from the lands of his fathers.
As time passed, some striking figures emerged from the people, as all history demonstrates men have done in all ages.
Daniel Boone crossed the Alleghanies, behind which the Indians made their first stand, thinking the white man would not cross that great breastwork thrown up by nature, and discovered Kentucky.