ck. At last, sun-scorched and
rain-beaten, foot-sore and leg-weary, their thighs torn to pieces by the
stout briars,[34] and their feet and hands blistered and scalded, they
came out in Powell's Valley, and followed the well-worn hunter's trail
across it. Thence it was easy to reach home, where the tale of their
adventures excited still more the young frontiersmen.

Their troubles were ended for the time being; but in Powell's Valley
they met other wanderers whose toil and peril had just begun. There they
encountered the company[35] which Daniel Boon was just leading across
the mountains, with the hope of making a permanent settlement in far
distant Kentucky.[36] Boon had sold his farm on the Yadkin and all the
goods he could not carry with him, and in September, 1773, he started
for Kentucky with his wife and his children; five families, and forty
men besides, went with him, driving their horses and cattle. It was the
first attempt that was made to settle a region separated by long
stretches of wilderness from the already inhabited districts; and it was
doomed to failure. On approaching the gloomy and forbidding defiles of
the Cumberland Mountains the party was attacked by Indians.[37] Six of
the men, including Boon's eldest son, were slain, and the cattle
scattered; and though the backwoodsmen rallied and repulsed their
assailants, yet they had suffered such loss and damage that they
retreated and took up their abode temporarily on the Clinch River.

In the same year Simon Kenton, afterwards famous as a scout and Indian
fighter, in company with other hunters, wandered through Kentucky.
Kenton, like every one else, was astounded at the beauty and fertility
of the land and the innumerable herds of buffalo, elk, and other game
that thronged the trampled ground around the licks. One of his
companions was taken by the Indians, who burned him alive.

In the following year numerous parties of surveyors visited the land.
One of these was headed by John Floyd, who was among the ablest of the
Kentucky pioneers, and afterwards played a prominent part in the young
commonwealth, until his death at the hands of the savages. Floyd was at
the time assistant surveyor of Fincastle County; and his party went out
for the purpose of making surveys "by virtue of the Governor's warrant
for officers and soldiers on the Ohio and its waters."[38]

They started on April 9, 1774,--eight men in all,--from their homes in
Fincastle County.[39] T