unless where nature and education, native endowment and circumstances,
have concurred. This wonderful man received his commission for his
achievements and his peculiar walk from the sign manual of nature. He
was formed to be a woodsman, and the adventurous precursor in the first
settlement of Kentucky. His home was in the woods, where others were
bewildered and lost. It is a mysterious spectacle to see a man possessed
of such an astonishing power of being perfectly familiar with his route
and his resources in the depths of the untrodden wilderness, where
others could as little divine their way, and what was to be done, as
mariners on mid-ocean, without chart or compass, sun, moon, or stars.
But that nature has bestowed these endowments upon some men and denied
them to others, is as certain as that she has given to some animals
instincts of one kind, fitting them for peculiar modes of life, which
are denied to others, perhaps as strangely endowed in another way.

The following pages aim to present a faithful picture of this singular
man, in his wanderings, captivities, and escapes. If the effort be
successful, we have no fear that the attention of the reader will
wander. There is a charm in such recitals, which lays its spell upon
all. The grave and gay, the simple and the learned, the young and
gray-haired alike yield to its influence.

We wish to present him in his strong incipient manifestations of the
development of his peculiar character in boyhood. We then see him on
foot and alone, with no companion but his dog, and no friend but his
rifle, making his way over trackless and unnamed mountains, and
immeasurable forests, until he explores the flowering wilderness of
Kentucky. Already familiar, by his own peculiar intuition, with the
Indian character, we see him casting his keen and searching glance
around, as the ancient woods rung with the first strokes of his axe, and