it seems simple and natural; and we have no doubt that the very words of
Boone are given for the most part. The use of glowing imagery and strong
figures is by no means confined to highly-educated persons. Those who
are illiterate, as Boone certainly was, often indulge in this style.
Even the Indians are remarkably fond of bold metaphors and other
rhetorical figures, as is abundantly proved by their speeches and
legends.

While Boone had been engaged in his late hunting tour, other adventurers
were examining the rich lands south of the Ohio.[18] Even in 1770, while
Boone was wandering solitary in those Kentucky forests, a band of forty
hunters, led by Colonel James Knox, had gathered from the valleys of
New River, Clinch, and Holston, to chase the buffaloes of the West; nine
of the forty had crossed the mountains, penetrated the desert and almost
impassable country about the heads of the Cumberland, and explored the
region on the borders of Kentucky and Tennessee. This hunting party,
from the length of time it was absent, is known in the traditions of
the West as the party of the Long Hunters. While these bold men were
penetrating the valley of the Ohio, in the region of the Cumberland Gap,
others came from Virginia and Pennsylvania, by the river; among them,
and in the same year, that the Long Hunters were abroad, (1770), came no
less noted a person than George Washington. His attention, as we have
before said, had been turned to the lands along the Ohio, at a very
early period; he had himself large claims, as well as far-reaching plans
of settlement, and he wished with his own eyes to examine the Western
lands, especially those about the mouth of the Kanawha. From the journal
of his expedition, published by Mr. Sparks, in the Appendix to the
second volume of his Washington Papers, we learn some valuable facts in
reference to the position of affairs in the Ohio valley at that time.
We learn, for instance, that the Virginians were rapidly surveying and