enter the fort in safety, but the gallant major, being unluckily separated from his band, was left alone outside.

His was a terribly critical situation. Fortunately, the Indians knew him for one of their most daring and skilful enemies, and hated him intensely. Fortunately, we say, for to that he owed his life. They could easily have killed him, but not a man of them would fire. Such a foeman must not die so easily; he must end his life in flame and torture. Such was their unspoken argument, and they dashed after him with yells of exultation, satisfied that they had one of their chief foes safely in their hands.

It seemed so, indeed. The major was well mounted, but the swift Indian runners managed to surround him on three sides, and force him towards the river bluffs, from which escape seemed impossible.

With redoubled shouts they closed in upon him. The major, somewhat ignorant of the situation, pushed onward till he suddenly found himself on the brow of a precipice which descended at an almost vertical inclination for a hundred and fifty feet. Here was a frightful dilemma. To right and left the Indian runners could be seen, their lines extending to the verge of the cliff. What was to be done? surrender to the Indians, attempt to dash through their line, or leap the cliff? Each way promised death. But death by fall was preferable to death by torture. And a forlorn hope of life remained. The horse was a powerful one, and might make the descent in safety. Gathering his reins tightly in his right hand, while his left grasped his rifle, McCullough

spurred the noble animal forward, and in an instant was over the brow of the cliff, and falling rather than dashing down its steep declivity.

By unlooked-for good fortune the foot of the bluff was reached in safety. Into the creek dashed horse and man, and in a minute or two the daring fugitive was across and safe from his savage pursuers.

The Indians returned disappointed to the vicinity of the fort. Here they found that their leader had decided on abandoning the assault. The reinforcements received, and the probability that others were on the way, discouraged the renegade, and Girty led his horde of savages away, first doing all the harm in his power by burning the houses of the settlement, and killing about three hundred cattle belonging to the settlers.

The defence of Fort Henry was one of the most striking for the courage displayed, and the success of the defenders, of the many gallant contests with the Indian foe of that age of stirring deeds. Aside from those killed in ambush, not a man of the garrison had lost his life. Of the assailants, from sixty to one hundred fell. Simon Girty and his Indians had received a lesson they would not soon forget.

DANIEL BOONE, THE PIONEER

OF KENTUCKY.

THE region of Kentucky, that "dark and bloody ground" of Indian warfare, lay long unknown to the whites. No Indians even dwelt there, though it was a land of marvellous beauty and wonderful fertility. For its forests and plains so abounded with game that it was used by various tribes as a hunting-ground, and here the savage warriors so often met in hostile array, and waged such deadly war, that not the most daring of them ventured to make it their home. And the name which they gave it was destined to retain its sombre significance for the whites, when they should invade the perilous Kentuckian wilds, and build their habitations in this land of dread.

In 1767 John Finley, a courageous Indian trader, pushed far into its depths, and returned with thrilling stories of his adventures and tempting descriptions of the beauty and fertility of the land. These he told to Daniel Boone, an adventure-loving Pennsylvanian, who had made his way to North Carolina, and built himself a home in the virgin forest at the head-waters of the Yadkin. Here, with his wife, his rifle, and his growing family, he enjoyed his frontier life with the greatest zest, until the increasing num

bers of new settlers and the alluring narrative of Finley induced him to leave his home and seek again the untrodden wilds.

On the 1st of May, 1769, Finley, Boone, and three others struck boldly into the broad backbone of mountain-land which lay between their old home and the new land of promise. They set out on their dangerous journey amid the tears of their families, who deemed that destruction awaited them, and vainly besought them to abandon the enterprise. Forward, for days and weeks, pushed the hardy pioneers, their rifles providing them with game, their eyes on the alert against savages, until, after what seemed months of toil, the mountains were passed and the fertile plains and extended forests of Kentucky lay before them.

"We found everywhere," says Boone, "abundance of wild beasts of all sorts, through this vast forest. The buffalo were more frequent than I have seer. cattle in the settlements, browsing on the leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage of these extensive plains, fearless, because ignorant of the violence of man. In this forest, the habitation of beasts of every kind natural to America, we practised hunting with great success until the 22d day of December following."

On that day Boone and another were taken prisoner by a party of Indians. Seven days they were held, uncertain as to their fate, but at length, by a skilful artifice, they escaped and made their way back to their camp, only to find it deserted, those whom they had left there having returned to North

Carolina. Other adventurers soon joined them, however, Boone's brother among them, and the remainder of the winter was passed in safety.

As regards the immediately succeeding events, it will suffice to say that Squire Boone, as Daniel's brother was called, returned to the settlements in the spring for supplies, the others having gone before, so that the daring hunter was left alone in that vast wilderness. Even his dog had deserted him, and the absolute solitude of nature surrounded him.

The movements we have described had not passed unknown to the Indians, and only the most extraordinary caution saved the solitary hunter from his dusky foes. He changed his camp every night, never sleeping twice in the same place. Often he found that it had been visited by Indians in his ab sence. Once a party of savages pursued him for many miles, until, by speed and skill, he threw them from his trail. Many and perilous were his adventures during his three months of lonely life in the woods and canebrakes of that fear-haunted land. Prowling wolves troubled him by night, prowling savages by day, yet fear never entered his bold heart, and cheerfulness never fled from his mind. He was the true pioneer, despising peril and proof against loneliness. At length his brother joined him, with horses and supplies, and the two adventurers passed another winter in the wilderness.

Several efforts were made in the ensuing years to people the country, but numbers of the settlers were slain by the Indians, whose hostility made the task so perilous that a permanent settlement was not