y had long desired.

CHAPTER VIII.

With the return of peace, the settlers were very happy. They could now go
out, fell the forests, and cultivate their fields in safety. There was no
longer any wily savage to lay in ambush, and keep them in perpetual
anxiety. No man among them was happier than Boone. He had been harassed
by constant struggles ever since he came to Kentucky, and these struggles
with the savages had made him a warrior rather than a hunter; but he
could now return to his darling passion. While others cultivated the
ground, he roamed through the wilderness with his rifle; he was now a
hunter indeed, spending weeks and months uninterruptedly in the forests
By day he moved where he pleased, and at night made his camp fearlessly
wherever the shades of night overtook him. His life was now happier than
ever.

Ere long, however, a cloud came over this happiness. Men began again to
crowd too closely upon him. In spite of all the early struggles with the
savages in Kentucky, emigrants had continued to flow into that country.
As early as 1783, Kentucky had been laid off into three counties, and was
that year formed into one district, and called the District of Kentucky.
In 1785, a convention was called at Danville, and a memorial was
addressed to the legislature of Virginia, proposing that Kentucky should
be erected into an independent State. In 1786, the legislature of
Virginia took the necessary steps for making the new State, if Congress
would admit it into the Union. In 1792, Kentucky was admitted into the
Union as one of the United States of America. And now that peace had come
to aid the settlers, emigration flowed in more rapidly. Court-houses,
jails, judges, lawyers, sheriffs, and constables, began necessarily to be
seen. Kentucky was becoming every day a more settled and civilized
region, and Boone's heart grew sick. He had sought the wilderness, and
men were fast taking it away from him. He began to think of moving.

Another sorrow now came over him, and soon fixed in him the determination
to seek a new home. Men began to dispute with him the title to his land.
The State of Kentucky had not been surveyed by the government, and laid
off into sections and townships, as the lands north of the Ohio river
have since been. The government of Virginia had issued certificates,
entitling the holder to locate where he pleased the number of acres
called for. To actual settlers, who should build a cabin, ra