Legislature, [Footnote: Draper's MSS., Boone MSS., from Bourbon Co. The
papers cover the years from 1784 on to '95.] while his fame as a hunter
and explorer was now spread abroad in the United States, and even
Europe. To travellers and new-comers generally, he was always pointed out
as the first discoverer of Kentucky; and being modest, self-contained
and self-reliant he always impressed them favorably. He spent most of
his time in hunting, trapping, and surveying land warrants for men of
means, being paid, for instance, two shillings current money per acre
for all the good laud he could enter on a ten-thousand acre Treasury
warrant. [Footnote: _Do_., certificate of G. Imlay, 1784.] He also
traded up and down the Ohio River, at various places, such as Point
Pleasant and Limestone; and at times combined keeping a tavern with
keeping a store. His accounts contain much quaint information. Evidently
his guests drank as generously as they ate; he charges one four pounds
sixteen shillings for two months' board and two pounds four shillings
for liquor. He takes the note of another for ninety-three gallons of
cheap corn whiskey. Whiskey cost sixpence a pint, and rum one shilling;
while corn was three shillings a bushel, and salt twenty-four shillings,
flour, thirty-six shillings a barrel, bacon sixpence and fresh pork and
buffalo beef threepence a pound. Boone procured for his customers or for
himself such articles as linen, cloth, flannel, corduroy, chintz,
calico, broadcloth, and velvet at prices varying according to the
quality, from three to thirty shillings a yard; and there was also
evidently a ready market for "tea ware," knives and forks, scissors,
buttons, nails, and all kinds of hardware. Furs and skins usually appear
on the debit sides of the various accounts, ranging in value from the
skin of a beaver, worth eighteen shillings, or that of a bear worth ten,
to those of deer, wolves, coons, wildcats, and foxes, costing two to
four shillings apiece. Boone procured his goods from merchants in
Hagerstown and Williamsport, in Maryland, whither he and his sons guided