for some Indian murders.
appears to have been unfounded.
visit to a family of the name of Great-house, were murdered
by them and their associates, under circumstances of extraordi-
nary cowardice and brutality. The mistake is one into which
Logan might, in view of some recent transactions that had hap-
pened under the command of Captain Cresap, naturally fall, and
which does not at all impair the force of his speech. Mr. Jeffer-
son meeting with a copy of it at Governor Dunmore's, in Wil-
liamsburg, transcribed it in his pocket-book, and afterwards im-
mortalized it in his "Notes on Virginia." He gave implicit
confidence to its authenticity. Doddridge is of the same opinion.
Jacob, in his Life of Cresap, insinuates that the speech was a
counterfeit, and declares that Cresap was as humane as brave,
and had no participation in the massacre. General George
Rogers Clarke, who was well acquainted with Logan and Cresap
both, vouches for the substantial truth of Mr. Jefferson's story of
Logan. Devoting himself to the work of revenge, he, with others,
butchered men, women, and children; knives, tomahawks, and
axes were left in the breasts which had been cleft asunder;
females were stripped, and outraged, too horrible to mention;
brains of infants beaten out and the dead bodies left a prey to
the beasts of the forest. The family of a settler on the north
fork of the Holston was massacred, and a war-club was left in the
house, and attached to it the following note, which had been pre-
viously, at Logan's dictation, written for him by one Robinson, a
prisoner:-

But the charge against Cresap
Logan's family being on a

"CAPTAIN CRESAP:

"What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The white people killed my kin at Conestoga a great while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too; and I have been three times to war since; but the Indians are not angry-only myself.

"July 21st, 1774.”

"CAPTAIN JOHN LOGAN.

*Kercheval's Hist. of Valley of Va.

Thirty scalps it was known that he took in these murderous raids, but he joined not in open battle

Simon Kenton, a native of Fauquier County, a voyager of the woods, was employed by Dunmore as a spy (together with Simon. Girty) during this campaign, in the course of which he traversed the country around Fort Pitt, and a large part of the present State of Ohio. His history is full of daring adventure, cruel sufferings, and extraordinary turns of fortune. He was eight times made to run the Indian gauntlet; three times bound to the stake. He was with Clarke in his expedition against Vincennes and Kaskaskia; and with Wayne in the campaign of 1794. He died in Ohio, in poverty and neglect, his once giant frame bowed down with age.* Girty, after playing for a time the spy on both sides in the revolutionary contest, became at length an adherent of the enemy, and proved, toward his countrymen, a cruel and barbarous miscreant, in whom every sentiment of humanity appears to have been extinct. Kenton and Girty are both good subjects for a novelist.

Suspicions were not wanting in the minds of many Virginians, especially the inhabitants of the west, that the frontier had been embroiled in the Indian war by Dunmore's machinations; and that his ultimate object was to secure an alliance with the savages to aid England in the expected contest with the colonies; and these suspicions were strengthened by his equivocal conduct during the campaign. He was also accused of fomenting, with the same sinister views, the boundary altercations between Pennsylvania and Virginia on the northwestern frontier. These charges and suspicions do not appear to be sustained by sufficient proof. It is probable that in these proceedings his lordship was prompted rather by motives of personal interest than of political manœuvre. His agent, Dr. Conolly, was locating large tracts of land on the borders of the Ohio.

By the Quebec Act of 1774 Great Britain, with a view of holding the colonies in check, established the Roman Catholic religion in Canada, and enlarged its bounds so as to comprise all the territory northwest of the Ohio to the head of Lake Superior

* McClung's Sketches of Western Adventure, 92.

and the Mississippi. This attempt to extend the jurisdiction of Canada to the Ohio was especially offensive to Virginia. Richard Henry Lee, in congress, denounced it as the worst of all the acts complained of. In Virginia, Dunmore's avarice getting the better of his loyalty, he espoused her claims to western lands, and became a partner in enormous purchases in Southern Illinois. In 1773 Thomas and Cuthbert Bullet, his agents, made surveys of lands at the falls of the Ohio; and a part of Louisville and of towns opposite to Cincinnati are yet held under his warrant.

Murray, a grandson of the Earl of Dunmore, and page to Queen Victoria, visited the United States partly, it was said, for the purpose of making enquiry relative to western lands, the title of which was derived from his grandfather. Young Murray visited some of the old seats on the James, and makes mention of them in his entertaining "Travels in the United States."

The assembly, upon the return of Dunmore to Williamsburg, gave him a vote of thanks for his good conduct of the war-a compliment which it was afterwards doubted whether he had merited. His motives in that campaign were, to say the least, somewhat mysterious. There is a curious coincidence in several points between the administration of Dunmore and that of Berkley, one hundred years before.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

DANIEL BOONE.

THIS famous explorer, a native of Pennsylvania, removed at an early age to North Carolina, and remained there till his fortieth year. In the year 1769 he left his home on the sequestered Yadkin, to wander through the wilderness in quest of the country of Kentucky, and to become the archetype of the race of pioneers. In this exploration of the unknown regions of Western Virginia, he was accompanied by five companions. Reaching Red River early in June, they beheld from an eminence the beautiful region of Kentucky. A pioneer named Finley is supposed by some to have been the first explorer of the interior of Kentucky, and it is said that he visited it alone; it is difficult to determine a matter of this kind, and the first exploration has been attributed to others. According to McClung,* it was Finley's glowing picture of the country, on his return home, in 1767, that allured Boone to venture into the wilderness. Kentucky, it appears, was not inhabited by the Indians, they having not a wigwam there; but the Southern and Northwestern Indians resorted there, as on a neutral ground, to hunt, and often came into collision and engaged in conflicts, which, according to some, gave it the name of Kentucky, or "the dark and bloody ground;" but the true signification of the word is a matter of doubt. Boone and his companions encamping, began to hunt and to reconnoitre the country. Innumerable buffaloes browsed on the leaves of the cane, or pastured on the herbage of the plains, or lingered on the border of the salt-lick. In December, Boone and a comrade, John Stuart, rambling in the magnificence of forests yet unscarred by the axe, were surprised by a party of Indians and captured. Boone met the catastrophe with a mien of stoical indifference. A week after

* Sketches of Western Adventure.

the capture the party encamped in the evening in a thick canebrake, and having built a large fire, lay down to rest. About midnight, Boone gently awaking his companion, they effected their escape, traversing the forest by the uncertain light of the stars, and by observing the mossy side of the trees. Returning to their camp they found it plundered and deserted; and the fate of its occupants could not be doubted. A brother of Boone, with another hardy adventurer, shortly after overtook the two forlorn survivors. It was not long before Stuart was slain by the savages and scalped, and the companion of Boone's brother devoured by wolves. The two brothers remained in a wilderness untrod by the white man, surrounded by perils, and far from the reach of succor. With unshaken fortitude they continued to hunt, and erected a rude cabin to shelter them from the storms of winter. When threatened by the approach of savages, they lay during the night concealed in swamps. In May, 1770, Boone's brother returned home for horses and ammunition, leaving him alone, without bread, salt, or sugar, or even a horse or a dog. Daniel Boone, in one of his solitary excursions made at this time, wandered during the whole day through a region whose native charms dispelled every gloomy thought. Just at the close of day, when the gales were lulled, not a breath of air stirring the leaves, he gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking around, with delight beheld the ample regions mapped out beneath. On one hand he saw the beautiful Ohio delineating the western boundary of Kentucky; while at a distance the mountains lifted their peaks to the clouds. All nature was still. He kindled a fire near a fountain of sweet water, and feasted on the loin of a buck killed a few hours before. As night folded her mysterious wings he heard the distant yells of savages; but, worn out with fatigue, he fell asleep, and did not awake until the morning beams were glancing through the forest glades, and the birds warbling their matin songs. No populous city, with all its excitements and attractions, could have pleased him half so much as the charms of nature in Kentucky. Rejoined by his brother, in the summer of 1770, he explored the valley of the Cumberland River. In 1771 Daniel Boone, after an absence of three years, returned to his home on the Yadkin; sold such of his pos