fugitive who had escaped, bleeding and almost breathless.

Hurrying on, an awful spectacle met their view. The bodies of six of
the young men lay in the path, mangled and gory, with their scalps torn
from their heads: the cattle were driven into the forest beyond pursuit.
One of these victims was the eldest son of Daniel Boone. James was a
noble lad of but seventeen years. His untimely death was a terrible blow
to his father and mother. This massacre took place on the tenth of
October, only a fortnight after the expedition had commenced its march.
The gloom which it threw over the minds of the emigrants was so great,
that the majority refused to press any farther into a wilderness where
they would encounter such perils.

They had already passed two mountain ridges. Between them there was a
very beautiful valley, through which flows the Clinch River. This many
leagues below, uniting with the Holston River, flowing on the other side
of Powell's Ridge, composes the majestic Tennessee, which, extending far
down into Alabama, turns again north, and traversing the whole breadth
of Tennessee and Kentucky, empties into the Ohio.

Notwithstanding the remonstrances of Daniel Boone and his brother, the
majority of the emigrants resolved to retreat forty miles over the
Walden Ridge, and establish themselves in the valley of the Clinch.
Daniel Boone, finding all his attempts to encourage them to proceed in
vain, decided with his customary good sense to acquiesce in their
wishes, and quietly to await further developments. The whole party
consequently retraced their steps, and reared their cabins on fertile
meadows in the valley of the Clinch River. Here, between parallel ridges
of mountains running north-east and south-west, Boone with his
disheartened emigrants passed seven months. This settlement was within
the limits of the present State of Virginia, in its most extreme
south-western corner.

The value of the vast country beyond the mountains was beginning to
attract the attention of the governors of the several colonies. Governor
Dunmore of Virginia had sent a party of surveyors to explore the valley
of the Ohio River as far as the celebrated Falls of the Ohio, near the
present site of Louisville. Quite a body of these surveyors had built
and fortified a camp near the Falls, and were busy in exploring the
country, in preparation for the granting of lands as rewards for
services to the officers and soldiers in the French war.