The brothers left such traces—or blazes as they are technically called—of their course, as they thought would enable them to find it again, until they reached the foot of the mountains. They tried various ascents, and finally discovered a route, which, with some labor might be rendered tolerably easy. They proposed to cross the families here, and blazed the path in a way that could not be mistaken. This important point settled, they hastened to the settlement, which they reached without accident.
CHAPTER VI.
Boone starts with his family to Kentucky—Their return to Clinch river—He conducts a party of surveyors to the Falls of Ohio—He helps build Boonesborough, and removes his family to the fort—His daughter and two of Col. Calloway's daughters taken prisoners by the Indians—They pursue the Indians and rescue the captives.
The next step was to collect a sufficient number of emigrants who would be willing to remove to the new country with the families of the Boones, to give the settlements security and strength to resist the attacks of the Indians. This was not an easy task. It may be readily imagined that the Boones saw only the bright side of the contemplated expedition. They painted the fertility and amenity of the flowering wilderness in the most glowing colors. They described the cane-brakes, the clover and grass, the transparent limestone springs and brooks, the open forests, the sugar maple orchards, the buffaloes, deer, turkeys and wild fowls, in all the fervid colors of their own imaginations. To them it was the paradise of the first pair, whose inhabitants had only to put forth their hands, and eat and enjoy. The depredations, captivities, and scalpings, of the Indians; the howling of the wolves; the diseases, and peculiar trials and difficulties of a new country, without houses, mills, and the most indispensable necessaries of civilized life, were all overlooked. But in such a case, in a compact settlement like that of the Yadkin, there are never wanting gainsayers, opposers, gossips, who envied the Boones. These caused those disposed to the enterprise to hear the other part, and to contemplate the other side of the picture. They put stories in circulation as eloquent as those of the Boones, which told of all the scalpings, captivities, and murders of the Indians, magnified in a tenfold proportion. With them, the savages were like the ogres and bloody giants of nursery stories. They had pleasant tales of horn-snakes, of such deadly malignity, that the thorn in their tails, struck into the largest tree in full verdure, instantly blasted it. They scented in the air of the country, deadly diseases, and to them, Boone's paradise was a Hinnom, the valley of the shadow of death.
The minds of the half resolved, half doubting persons, that meditated emigration, vibrated alternately backwards and forwards, inclined or disinclined to it, according to the last view of the case presented to them. But the natural love of adventure, curiosity, fondness for the hunting life, dissatisfaction with the incessant labor necessary for subsistence on their present comparatively sterile soil, joined to the confident eloquence of the Boones, prevailed on four or five families to join them in the expedition.
All the necessary arrangements of preparing for this distant expedition, of making sales and purchases, had occupied nearly two years. The expedition commenced its march on the 26th of September, 1773. They all set forth with confident spirits for the western wilderness, and were joined by forty persons in Powell's Valley, a settlement in advance of that on the Yadkin, towards the western country. The whole made a cavalcade of nearly eighty persons.
The three principal ranges of the Alleghany, over which they must pass, were designated as Powell's, Walden's, and Cumberland. These mountains forming the barrier between the old settlements and the new country, stretch from the north-east to the south-west. They are of great length and breadth, and not far distant from each other. There are nature-formed passes over them, which render the ascent comparatively easy. The aspect of these huge piles was so wild and rugged, as to make it natural for those of the party who were unaccustomed to mountains, to express fears of being able to reach the opposite side. The course traced by the brothers on their return to Carolina, was found and followed. The advantage of this forethought was strongly perceived by all. Their progress was uninterrupted by any adverse circumstance, and every one was in high spirits, until the west side of Walden's ridge, the most elevated of the three, had been gained. They were now destined to experience a most appalling reverse of fortune.
On the tenth of October, as the party were advancing along a narrow defile, unapprehensive of danger, they were suddenly terrified by fearful yells. Instantly aware that Indians surrounded them, the men sprang to the defence of the helpless women and children. But the attack had been so sudden, and the Indians were so much superior in point of numbers, that six men fell at the first onset of the savages. A seventh was wounded, and the party would have been overpowered, but for a general and effective discharge of the rifles of the remainder. The Indians, terror-struck, took to flight, and disappeared.
Had the numbers of the travellers allowed it, they felt no inclination to pursue the retreating Indians. Their loss had been too serious to permit the immediate gratification of revenge. The eldest son of Daniel Boone was found among the slain. The domestic animals accompanying the expedition were so scattered by the noise of the affray, that it was impossible again to collect and recover them. The distress and discouragement of the party were so great, as to produce an immediate determination to drop the projected attempt of a settlement in Kentucky, and return to Clinch river, which lay forty miles in their rear, where a number of families had already fixed themselves.
They then proceeded to perform the last melancholy duties to the bodies of their unfortunate companions with all decent observances which circumstances would allow. Their return was then commenced. Boone and his brother, with some others, did not wish to forsake the undertaking upon which they had set out; but the majority against them was so great, and the feeling on the subject so strong, that they were compelled to acquiesce. The party retraced, in deep sadness, the steps they had so lately taken in cheerfulness, and even joy.