The intercourse between the families was kept up after the Boones had
removed to North Carolina and John Lincoln had gone to Virginia.
Abraham Lincoln, son of John, and grandfather of the President, was
married to Miss Mary Shipley [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote
relocated to chapter end.] in North Carolina. The inducement which led
him to leave Virginia, where his standing and his fortune were
assured, was, in all probability, his intimate family relations with
the great explorer, the hero of the new country of Kentucky, the land
of fabulous richness and unlimited adventure. At a time when the
Eastern States were ringing with the fame of the mighty hunter who was
then in the prime of his manhood, and in the midst of those
achievements which will forever render him one of the most picturesque
heroes in all our annals, it is not to be wondered at that his own
circle of friends should have caught the general enthusiasm and felt
the desire to emulate his career.

Boone's exploration of Kentucky had begun some ten years before
Lincoln set out to follow his trail. In 1769 he made his memorable
journey to that virgin wilderness of whose beauty he always loved to
speak even to his latest breath. During all that year he hunted,
finding everywhere abundance of game. "The buffalo," Boone says, "were
more frequent than I have seen cattle in the settlements, browsing on
the leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage on these extensive
plains, fearless because ignorant of the violence of man. Sometimes we
saw hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were
amazing." In the course of the winter, however, he was captured by the
Indians while hunting with a comrade, and when they had contrived to
escape they never found again any trace of the rest of their party.
But a few days later they saw two men approaching and hailed them with
the hunter's caution, "Hullo, strangers; who are you?" They replied,