er spending some
time in company with the Long Hunters, the Boones, their horses
laden with furs, set their faces homeward. On their return
journey, near Cumberland Gap, they had the misfortune to be
surrounded by a party of Indians who robbed them of their guns
and all their peltries. With this humiliating conclusion to his
memorable tour of exploration, Daniel Boone, as he himself says,
"once more reached home after experiencing hardships which would
defy credulity in the recital."

Despite the hardships and the losses, Boone had achieved the
ambition of years: he had seen Kentucky, which he "esteemed a
second paradise." The reports of his extended explorations, which
he made to Judge Henderson, were soon communicated to the other
partners of the land company; and their letters of this period,
to one another, bristle with glowing and minute descriptions of
the country, as detailed by their agent. Boone was immediately
engaged to act in the company's behalf to sound the Cherokees
confidentially with respect to their willingness to lease or sell
the beautiful hunting-grounds of the trans-Alleghany. The high
hopes of Henderson and his associates at last gave promise of
brilliant realization. Daniel Boone's glowing descriptions of
Kentucky excited in their minds, says a gifted early chronicler,
the "spirit of an enterprise which in point of magnitude and
peril, as well as constancy and heroism displayed in its
execution, has never been paralleled in the history of America."

CHAPTER XI. The Regulators

It is not a persons labour, nor yet his effects that will do, but
if he has but one horse to plow with, one bed to lie on, or one
cow to give a little milk for his children, they must all go to
raise money which is not to be had. And lastly if his personal
estate (sold at one tenth of its value) will not do, then his
lands (which perhaps has cost him many years of toil and labour)
must go the same way to satisfy, these cursed hungry
caterpillars, that are eating and will eat out the bowels of our
Commonwealth, if they be not pulled down from their nests in a
very short time.--George Sims: A Serious Address to the
Inhabitants of Granville County, containing an Account of our
deplorable Situation we suffer .... and some necessary Hints with
Respect to a Reformation. June 6, 1765.

It is highly probable that even at the time of his earlier
explorations in behalf of Richard Henderson and Company, Daniel
Boone anti