The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spirit of the Border, by Zane Grey

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Title: The Spirit of the Border
A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley

Author: Zane Grey

Release Date: September 11, 2004 [EBook #1239]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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This etext was prepared by Bruce Metcalf of Chattanooga, TN.

THE SPIRIT OF THE BORDER
A ROMANCE OF THE EARLY SETTLERS IN THE OHIO VALLEY

BY ZANE GREY

1906

To my brother

With many fond recollections of days spent in the solitude of the
forests where only can be satisfied that wild fever of freedom of
which this book tells; where to hear the whirr of a wild duck in his
rapid flight is joy; where the quiet of an autumn afternoon swells
the heart, and where one may watch the fragrant wood-smoke curl from
the campfire, and see the stars peep over dark, wooded hills as
twilight deepens, and know a happiness that dwells in the wilderness
alone.

Introduction

The author does not intend to apologize for what many readers may
call the "brutality" of the story; but rather to explain that its
wild spirit is true to the life of the Western border as it was
known only a little more than one hundred years ago.

The writer is the fortunate possessor of historical material of
undoubted truth and interest. It is the long-lost journal of Colonel
Ebenezer Zane, one of the most prominent of the hunter-pioneer, who
labored in the settlement of the Western country.

The story of that tragic period deserves a higher place in
historical literature than it has thus far been given, and this
unquestionably because of a lack of authentic data regarding the
conquering of the wilderness. Considering how many years the
pioneers struggled on the border of this country, the history of
their efforts is meager and obscure.

If the years at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth century were full of stirring adventure on the part of
the colonists along the Atlantic coast, how crowded must they have
been for the almost forgotten pioneers who daringly invaded the
trackless wilds! None ther