beheld with mingled surprise and amusement a hunter, bareheaded,
stretched flat upon his back on a deerskin spread on the ground,
singing merrily at the top of his voice! It was Daniel Boone,
joyously whiling away the solitary hours in singing one of his
favorite songs of the border. In March, 1771, after spending some
time in company with the Long Hunters, the Boones, their horses
laden with furs, set their faces homeward. On their return
journey, near Cumberland Gap, they had the misfortune to be
surrounded by a party of Indians who robbed them of their guns
and all their peltries. With this humiliating conclusion to his
memorable tour of exploration, Daniel Boone, as he himself says,
"once more reached home after experiencing hardships which would
defy credulity in the recital."

Despite the hardships and the losses, Boone had achieved the
ambition of years: he had seen Kentucky, which he "esteemed a
second paradise." The reports of his extended explorations, which
he made to Judge Henderson, were soon communicated to the other
partners of the land company; and their letters of this period,
to one another, bristle with glowing and minute descriptions of
the country, as detailed by their agent. Boone was immediately
engaged to act in the company's behalf to sound the Cherokees
confidentially with respect to their willingness to lease or sell
the beautiful hunting-grounds of the trans-Alleghany. The high
hopes of Henderson and his associates at last gave promise of
brilliant realization. Daniel Boone's glowing descriptions of
Kentucky excited in their minds, says a gifted early chronicler,
the "spirit of an enterprise which in point of magnitude and
peril, as well as constancy and heroism displayed in its
execution, has never been paralleled in the history of America."