Chapter 6

The synod came to an end, and the congregation filed slowly out of the barn. Those who had ridden mounted again, and went their homeward way at the slow and decorous pace suitable to Sunday. Squire Boone, who had been sitting on the front bench with his wife Sarah, and nine of his eleven children, gathered the latter together, and guided them, much like a flock of sheep, to his log cabin home near Oley. One of them, the fourth boy, Daniel by name, had lingered behind. He had waited until the five Delawares were leaving, and then had gone up to the youngest of the Indians, and touched his hand.

The Indian looked down at the small boy, and smiled. "How?" he said encouragingly.

"Is the feather in your hair a flamingo feather?" asked the boy.

The Delaware nodded. "Yes, him flamingo."

"How did you win it?"

The young man smiled again. "Once the Delawares must have rescue from the Hurons. A chief sent me with others to take word. We must go through Iroquois country to get Hurons. Iroquois bad people, war with us. Other Delawares killed, I take word in safe. Hurons go back with me, and help my people. Chief give me flamingo feather."

Admiration shone in the boy's eyes. "I like the Delawares," said he.

"Delawares like you people," replied the Indian. "What you name?"

"Daniel Boone. Some day, when I grow up, I'll come and visit you."

"Good," said the other. He held out his hand as he was used to seeing white men do. The boy put his palm in the Indian's, and they shook hands. Then Daniel turned and scampered down the road after his father.

The boys of the Boone family had a very good time. They lived on what was then the frontier between civilization and the wilderness. They learned to hunt and fish, and to know the habits of the animals of the woods and fields. Moreover they were almost as used to seeing Indians as to seeing white people, and had none of the fear of them which kept so many of the settlers farther east continually uneasy.

The boys and girls had plenty of work to do. Squire Boone had a big farm, and kept five or six looms working in his house, making homespun clothes for his large family and to sell to his neighbors. He owned a splendid grazing range some little distance north of his home, and sent his cattle there early each spring.

Shortly after that Sunday of Count Zinzendorf's missionary meeting Daniel's mother told him that he and she were to take the cattle north to this range, and watch them during the summer. Squire Boone was needed at the farm, the older girls were to tend the loom, and the mother had chosen her favorite son to go north with her.

At the beginning of summer they drove the cows to the range, and stayed there with them until autumn. Mrs. Boone and Daniel lived in a small cabin, far from any neighbors. Near the cabin, over a spring, was a dairy-house. The sturdy woman worked here, making fine butter and cheese, while Daniel kept guard over the cattle, letting them wander over the hills and through the woods as they would, but driving them back to their pen near the cabin at sunset.

This duty of herdsman left Daniel much time to himself. He spent this time in studying woodcraft. He grew passionately fond of everything belonging to the wilderness; he knew birds and beasts, the trails through the forest and the course of streams as well as any Indian. He set traps of his own making, and brought his captures proudly home at night to his mother.

At first he had to make his own weapons, and invented a curious implement, simply a slim, smooth-shaved sapling, with a bunch of twisted roots at the end. This he learned to throw so skilfully that he could readily kill birds, rabbits, and small game with it. A little later, however, his father gave him a rifle, and he became an expert marksman, able to provide his mother with plenty of game for food.

It was a wonderful life for a boy who loved the country. All summer he herded the cattle and roamed through the almost untrodden wilderness. In the winter his father let him hunt as soon as he had learned to handle a gun. Daniel roamed far and wide across the Neversink mountain range to the north and west of Monocacy Valley. He kept his family supplied with great stock of game, and he cured the animals' skins. When he had a sufficient store of skins he set out to market them in Philadelphia.

The city William Penn had founded on the banks of the Delaware was then a small but prosperous village. It had been designed on the plan of a checker-board, and most of the houses were surrounded by well-kept gardens and flourishing orchards. Primitive as it was, the country boy looked at it with wondering admiration. The houses, which were really very simple, were palaces to him, when he thought of his father's log cabin. The men and women, dressed in the latest importations brought from London by sailing vessels, were figures of surpassing style and elegance.

Life in Philadelphia seemed very rich to Daniel Boone; he liked to loiter along the streets and look in at the wide gardens and the comfortable white porches, and he liked to stop and watch a city chaise drive by, with a man in a claret or plum-colored suit and a woman in a bright taffeta gown. They were almost a different race from the buckskin-clad people of the wilderness from whom he came.

Yet the frontier was in fact very near to Philadelphia. A few outlying fields about the town alone separated it from the wild forest; guards were ever ready to give warning of danger from Indians on the war-path, and friendly Indians were constantly met with on the streets. There were many fur-traders, too, who brought their goods to market as Daniel did, and one was constantly meeting some rough-clad trapper in from the wilds for a few days of city life.

Daniel wandered about slowly, enjoying everything he saw with a boy's delight in the unusual, and finally exchanging the skins he had brought with him for things he needed in his hunting,--long, sharp-edged knives, flints, powder and lead for his gun.

When Daniel was fourteen his older brother married a young Quakeress who had received a better education than any of her neighbors. She liked Daniel and began to teach him to read and to figure. He was not a brilliant scholar, but he learned enough to do rough surveying work, and to write letters which expressed what he meant although spelled on a plan of his own. At about the same time Squire Boone started a blacksmith shop, and Daniel added this work to what he already did as herdsman and hunter. The work in iron gave him a chance to plan and carry out new ideas of his in regard to guns and traps.

The Pennsylvania country was gradually filling up, and in 1750, when Daniel was fifteen, Squire Boone began to wonder where his eleven children would find farming land. Directly westward rose the Alleghany Mountains, a high barrier to pioneers, and report said that the Indians who lived just beyond them were particularly fierce. Southwest, however, lay alluring valleys, broad meadows between the Appalachian ranges that stretched from Pennsylvania through Virginia and the Carolinas into far-off Georgia. Men who wanted new and bigger lands went south into the Blue Ridge country, and some near neighbors of the Boones had pushed on to the Yadkin Valley which lay in northwestern North Carolina. Reports came back of the splendid lands they found there.

Squire Boone was by nature a pioneer, a man who loved to explore new lands and build new settlements, and so he decided to venture into this new and promising country. There is a world of romance in such a journey as this the Boones now undertook, and they were but one of many thousand families who were pushing west and south, laying the foundations of a great land.

Mrs. Boone and the younger children were safely stowed away in canvas-covered wagons, such as were later known as "prairie schooners," and Squire Boone with Daniel and the older boys rode horseback, driving the cattle before them, and forming an armed guard about the caravan. They crossed the ford at Harper's Ferry and went on up the rich Shenandoah Valley. At night camp was pitched by a spring and the wagons drawn up in a circle about the cattle. A camp-fire was built and the game which Daniel as huntsman had shot was cooked for supper. Sentries were posted, and all night long father and sons took turns guarding against attack from Indians.

Think what a prospect lay before the pioneers! A vast tract of the fairest and richest land in the world waiting to be claimed from the wilderness. They had only to choose and take. But the zeal for exploration led them on, over the table-land of western Virginia, through the primeval forests, up the currents of the many rivers that flow toward the Ohio, and so on to the south and west.

As they neared the Yadkin they came to a splendid stretch of land; a high prairie, with fine grass for cattle, and near at hand streams edged with cane-brake. Daniel saw such fish and game as he had never seen before, fruit to be had for the taking, and a cattle range only bounded by the distant western mountains. But as he rode into the splendid prairie he thought more of those distant blue-topped heights than of the near-by meadows; he knew that on and on westward lay a great unknown country and already he felt it call to him to be explored.

Squire Boone chose land at a place called Buffalo Lick near the Yadkin River, and built a home there. Daniel now spent little time about the farm, for he had learned the value of skins in the Atlantic cities. Buffalo were plentiful all about the settlement, and he could kill four or five deer in a day. It was in truth a hunter's paradise. In a single day he could kill enough bears to make a ton of what was called bear-bacon; there were numberless wolves, panthers, and wildcats; turkeys, beavers, otters and smaller animals ran wild all about him, and from morn till night he was out hunting in the woods.

But life was not all sport for the young Boones. Various Indian tribes, the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and the Shawnese hunted not far away, and although they were often on friendly terms with the whites, and came to the settlement to trade, sometimes they put on their war paint, and descended on the small frontier homes with full fury.

As the French came down from the north disputing this new land with the English settlers they made the Indians their allies, and the border warfare grew more bitter. Finally the English general Braddock decided to march west himself and try to teach the French and Indians a lesson.

It was not likely that such a sturdy youth as Daniel Boone could resist the desire to march against the French. The expedition promised him a chance to push farther into that wild western country, if nothing else, and so he joined Braddock's small army with about a hundred other North Carolina frontiersmen. Daniel was made chief wagoner and blacksmith.

General Braddock knew nothing of Indian warfare, and the little expedition proved an easy target for their enemies. The cumbersome and heavily laden baggage wagons were a great handicap to them. The English regulars, the frontiersmen, and the baggage train were caught in the deep ravine of Turtle Creek, a few miles away from Pittsburg, and suddenly set upon by ambushed Indians commanded by French officers. Many of the drivers, caught in the trap, were killed. Daniel, however, contrived to cut the traces of his team, and mounting one of the horses, escaped down and out of the ravine under a fire of shot and arrows.

The Indians pursued the fugitives, laying waste the borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia, but not following as far south as the Yadkin. Daniel reached home, and set to work to strengthen the settlement's ties of friendship with the two tribes of the neighborhood, the Catawbas and the Cherokees. With their aid he was able to provide sufficient safeguard against the Northern tribes.

While he was with Braddock's army Daniel had met a man named John Finley, who fired his imagination with stories of his wanderings in the west. He was a fur-trader, and his passion for hunting had already led him into the Kentucky wilderness as far as the Falls of the Ohio River, where Louisville now stands. He had had countless adventures with Indians, with wild animals, and with the perils of stream and forest. Young Boone drank in the stories eagerly, and resolved that some day he would himself go out to explore the west.

Daniel had now come to manhood. For a time he stayed in the Yadkin Valley, but the call to follow the trail of the buffaloes and the westward moving Shawnese was clear in his ears. Dangerous days of Indian fighting on the border held him close at home, but the time came when he could resist the call no longer. He left home and took his way through the uncharted hills and forests to Kentucky.

At times he fought for his life with roving Indians, and at times he captained some small English garrison beset by the same red men. He won great renown as an Indian fighter, as a hunter, as an intrepid explorer. The little town of Boonesborough was named for him, and he defended it through a long and perilous siege. But so soon as men came and built homes and staked out farms Boone must be moving west. What he sought was the wilderness; he was happiest in the great recesses of the woods, or blazing his own trail across untrodden prairies.

He led the vanguard into North Carolina, into West Virginia, into Kentucky, and then into Missouri. He is a splendid example of the man who must go first to prepare the way for others, in every way the best type of those brave, hardy pioneers who were claiming the continent for English-speaking people. The things he had most desired as a boy he most desired in manhood, the rough life of a new country and the struggle to overcome the perils of the wild.

VIII

John Paul Jones

The Boy of the Atlantic: 1747-1792

The summer afternoon was fair, and the waves that rolled upon the north shore of Solway Firth in the western Lowlands of Scotland were calm and even. But the tide was coming in, and inch by inch was covering the causeway that led from shore to a high rock some hundred yards away. The rock was bare of vegetation, and sheer on the landward side, but on the face toward the sea were rough jutting points that would give a climber certain footholds, and near the top smooth ledges.

On one or two of these ledges sea-gulls had built their nests, tucked in under projecting points where they would be sheltered from wind and rain. Now the gulls would sweep in from sea, curving in great circles until they reached their homes, and then would sit on the ledge calling to their mates across the water. Except for the cries of the gulls, however, the rock was very quiet. The lazy regular beat of the waves about its base was very soothing. On the longest ledge, below the sea-gulls' nests, lay a boy about twelve years old, sound asleep, his face turned toward the ocean.

Either the gulls' cries or the sun, now slanting in the west, disturbed him. He did not open his eyes, but he clenched his fists, and muttered incoherently. Presently with a start he awoke. He rubbed his eyes, and then sat up. "What a queer dream!" he said aloud.

The ledge where he sat was not a very safe place. There was scarcely room for him to move, and directly below him was the sea. But this boy was quite as much at home on high rocks or in the water as he was on land, and he was very fond of looking out for distant sailing vessels and wondering where they might be bound.

He glanced along the north shore to the little fishing hamlet of Arbigland where he lived. He saw that the tide had come in rapidly while he slept, and that the path to the shore was now covered. He stood up and stretched his bare arms, brown with sunburn, high over his head. Then he started to climb down from the ledge by the jutting points of rock.

He was as sure-footed as any mountaineer. His clothes were old, so neither rock nor sea could do them much harm; his feet were bare. He was short but very broad, and his muscles were strong and supple. When he came to the foot of the rock he stood a moment, hunting for the deepest pool at its base, then, loosing his hold, he dove into the water.

In a few seconds he was up again, floating on his back; and a little later he struck out, swimming hand over hand, toward a sandy beach to the south.

A young man, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant in the British navy, stood on the beach, watching the boy swim. When the latter had landed and shaken the water from him much as a dog would, the man approached him. "Where on earth did you come from, John Paul?" he asked with a laugh. "The first thing I knew I saw you swimming in from sea."

"I was out on the rock asleep," said the boy. "The tide came up and cut me off. And oh, Lieutenant Pearson, I had the strangest dream! I dreamt I was in the middle of a great sea-fight. I was captain of a ship, and her yard-arms were on fire, and we were pouring broadsides into the enemy, afraid any minute that we'd sink. How we did fight that ship!"

The young officer's eyes glowed. "And I hope you may some day, John!" he exclaimed.

"But the strangest part was that our ship didn't fly the English flag," said the boy. "At the masthead was a flag I'd never seen, red and white with a blue field filled with stars in the corner. What country's flag is that?"

Pearson thought for a moment. "There's no such flag," he said finally. "I know them all, and there's none like that. The rest of your dream may come true, but not that about the flag. Come, let's be walking back to Arbigland."

Although John Paul's father came of peaceful farmer and fisher folk who lived about Solway Firth, his mother had been a "Highland lassie," descended from one of the fighting clans in the Grampian Hills. The boy had much of the Highlander's love of wild adventure, and found it hard to live the simple life of the fishing village. The sea appealed to him, and he much preferred it to the small Scotch parish school. His family were poor, and as soon as he was able he was set to steering fishing yawls and hauling lines. At twelve he was as sturdy and capable as most boys at twenty.

Many men in Arbigland had heard John Paul beg his father to let him cross the Solway to the port of Whitehaven and ship on some vessel bound for America, where his older brother William had found a new home. But his father saw no opening for his younger son in such a life. All the way back to town that afternoon the boy told Lieutenant Pearson of his great desire, and the young officer said he would try to help him.

The boy's chance, however, came in another way. A few days later it chanced that Mr. James Younger, a big ship-owner, was on the landing-place of Arbigland when some of the villagers caught sight of a small fishing yawl beating up against a stiff northeast squall, trying to gain the shelter of the little tidal-creek that formed the harbor of the town.

Mr. Younger looked long at the boat and then shook his head. "I don't think she'll do it," he said dubiously.

Yet the boat came on, and he could soon see that the only crew were a man and a boy. The boy was steering, handling the sheets and giving orders, while the man simply sat on the gunwale to trim the boat.

"Who's the boy?" asked the ship-owner.

"John Paul," said a bystander. "That's his father there."

Mr. Younger looked at the man pointed out, who was standing near, and who did not seem to be in the least alarmed. "Are you the lad's father?" he asked.

The man looked up and nodded. "Yes, that's my boy John conning the boat," said he. "He'll fetch her in. This isn't much of a squall for him!"

The father spoke with truth. The boy handled his small craft with such skill that he soon had her alongside the wharf. As soon as John Paul had landed Mr. Younger stepped up to the father and asked to be introduced to the son. Then the ship-owner told him how much he had admired his seamanship, and asked if he would care to sail as master's apprentice in a new vessel he owned, which was fitting out for a voyage to Virginia and the West Indies. The boy's eyes danced with delight; he begged his father to let him go, and finally Mr. Paul consented. The twelve-year-old boy had won his wish to go to sea.

A few days later the brig _Friendship_ sailed from Whitehaven, with small John Paul on board, and after a slow voyage which lasted thirty-two days dropped anchor in the Rappahannock River of Virginia.

The life of a colonial trader was very pleasant in 1760. The sailing-vessels usually made a triangular voyage, taking some six months to go from England to the colonies, then to the West Indies, and so east again. About three of the six months were spent at the small settlements on shore, discharging goods from England, taking on board cotton and tobacco, and bartering with the merchants.

The Virginians, who lived on their great plantations with many servants, were the most hospitable people in the world, always eager to entertain a stranger, and the English sailors were given the freedom of the shore. The _Friendship_ anchored a short distance down the river from where John Paul's older brother lived, and the boy immediately went to see him and stayed as his guest for some time.

This brother William had been adopted by a wealthy planter named Jones, and the latter was delighted with the young John Paul, and tried to get him to leave the sailor's life and settle on the Rappahannock. But much as John liked the easy life of the plantation, the fine riding horses, the wide fields and splendid rivers, the call of the sea was dearer to him, and when the _Friendship_ dropped down the Rappahannock bound for Tobago and the Barbadoes he was on board of her.

Those were adventurous days for sailors and merchants. Money was to be made in many ways, and consciences were not overcareful as to the ways. The prosperous traders of Virginia did not mind taking an interest in some ocean rover bound on pirate's business, or in the more lawful slave-trade with the west coast of Africa. For a time, however, young John Paul sailed for Mr. Younger, and was finally paid by being given a one-sixth interest in a ship called _King George's Packet_.

The boy was now first mate, and trade with England being dull, he and the captain decided to try the slave-trade. For two years they made prosperous voyages between Jamaica and the coast of Guinea, helping to found the fortunes of some of the best known families of America by importing slaves.

After a year, however, John Paul tired of the business, and sold his share of the ship to the captain for about one thousand guineas. He was not yet twenty-one, but his seafaring life had already made him fairly well-to-do. He planned to go home and see his family in Scotland, and took passage in the brig _John o' Gaunt_.

Life on shipboard was full of perils then, and very soon after the brig had cleared the Windward Islands the terrible scourge of yellow fever was found to be on the vessel. Within a few days the captain, the mate, and all of the crew but five had died of the disease. John Paul was fully exposed to it, but he and the five men escaped it. He was the only one of those left who knew anything about navigation, so he took command, and after a stormy passage, with a crew much too small to handle the brig, he managed to bring her safely to Whitehaven with all her cargo. He handled her as skilfully as he had the small yawl in Solway Firth.