the Valley of Mexico; or Vasco Nunez, standing alone on the peak
of Darien, and stretching his eyes over the hitherto undiscovered
waters of the Pacific.---William Gilmore Simms: Views and
Reviews.


A chance acquaintance formed by Daniel Boone, during the French
and Indian War, with the Irish lover of adventure, John Findlay,
was the origin of Boone's cherished longing to reach the El
Dorado of the West. In this slight incident we may discern the
initial inspiration for the epochal movement of westward
expansion. Findlay was a trader and horse peddler, who had early
migrated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He had been licensed a trader
with the Indians in 1747. During the same year he was married to
Elizabeth Harris, daughter of John Harris, the Indian-trader at
Harris's Ferry on the Susquehanna River, after whom Harrisburg
was named. During the next eight years Findlay carried on his
business of trading in the interior. Upon the opening of the
French and Indian War he was probably among "the young men about
Paxtang who enlisted immediately," and served as a waggoner in
Braddock's expedition. Over the campfires, during the ensuing
campaign in 1765, young Boone was an eager listener to Findlay's
stirring narrative of his adventures in the Ohio Valley and on
the wonderfully beautiful levels of Kentucky in 1752. The fancies
aroused in his brooding mind by Findlay's moving recital and his
description of an ancient passage through the Ouasioto or
Cumberland Gap and along the course of the Warrior's Path,
inspired him with an irrepressible longing to reach that alluring
promised land which was the perfect realization of the hunter's
paradise.