Historic Boyhoods Part 8

and Squire Boone with Daniel and the older boys rode horseback, driving the cattle before them, and forming an armed guard about the caravan.

They crossed the ford at Harper's Ferry and went on up the rich Shenandoah Valley. At night camp was pitched by a spring and the wagons drawn up in a circle about the cattle. A camp-fire was built and the game which Daniel as huntsman had shot was cooked for supper. Sentries were posted, and all night long father and sons took turns guarding against attack from Indians.

Think what a prospect lay before the pioneers! A vast tract of the fairest and richest land in the world waiting to be claimed from the wilderness. They had only to choose and take. But the zeal for exploration led them on, over the table-land of western Virginia, through the primeval forests, up the currents of the many rivers that flow toward the Ohio, and so on to the south and west.

As they neared the Yadkin they came to a splendid stretch of land; a high prairie, with fine gra.s.s for cattle, and near at hand streams edged with cane-brake. Daniel saw such fish and game as he had never seen before, fruit to be had for the taking, and a cattle range only bounded by the distant western mountains. But as he rode into the splendid prairie he thought more of those distant blue-topped heights than of the near-by meadows; he knew that on and on westward lay a great unknown country and already he felt it call to him to be explored.

Squire Boone chose land at a place called Buffalo Lick near the Yadkin River, and built a home there. Daniel now spent little time about the farm, for he had learned the value of skins in the Atlantic cities.

Buffalo were plentiful all about the settlement, and he could kill four or five deer in a day. It was in truth a hunter's paradise. In a single day he could kill enough bears to make a ton of what was called bear-bacon; there were numberless wolves, panthers, and wildcats; turkeys, beavers, otters and smaller animals ran wild all about him, and from morn till night he was out hunting in the woods.

But life was not all sport for the young Boones. Various Indian tribes, the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and the Shawnese hunted not far away, and although they were often on friendly terms with the whites, and came to the settlement to trade, sometimes they put on their war paint, and descended on the small frontier homes with full fury.

As the French came down from the north disputing this new land with the English settlers they made the Indians their allies, and the border warfare grew more bitter. Finally the English general Braddock decided to march west himself and try to teach the French and Indians a lesson.

It was not likely that such a st.u.r.dy youth as Daniel Boone could resist the desire to march against the French. The expedition promised him a chance to push farther into that wild western country, if nothing else, and so he joined Braddock's small army with about a hundred other North Carolina frontiersmen. Daniel was made chief wagoner and blacksmith.

General Braddock knew nothing of Indian warfare, and the little expedition proved an easy target for their enemies. The c.u.mbersome and heavily laden baggage wagons were a great handicap to them. The English regulars, the frontiersmen, and the baggage train were caught in the deep ravine of Turtle Creek, a few miles away from Pittsburg, and suddenly set upon by ambushed Indians commanded by French officers. Many of the drivers, caught in the trap, were killed. Daniel, however, contrived to cut the traces of his team, and mounting one of the horses, escaped down and out of the ravine under a fire of shot and arrows.

The Indians pursued the fugitives, laying waste the borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia, but not following as far south as the Yadkin.

Daniel reached home, and set to work to strengthen the settlement's ties of friends.h.i.+p with the two tribes of the neighborhood, the Catawbas and the Cherokees. With their aid he was able to provide sufficient safeguard against the Northern tribes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DANIEL BOONE'S FIRST VIEW OF KENTUCKY]

While he was with Braddock's army Daniel had met a man named John Finley, who fired his imagination with stories of his wanderings in the west. He was a fur-trader, and his pa.s.sion for hunting had already led him into the Kentucky wilderness as far as the Falls of the Ohio River, where Louisville now stands. He had had countless adventures with Indians, with wild animals, and with the perils of stream and forest.

Young Boone drank in the stories eagerly, and resolved that some day he would himself go out to explore the west.

Daniel had now come to manhood. For a time he stayed in the Yadkin Valley, but the call to follow the trail of the buffaloes and the westward moving Shawnese was clear in his ears. Dangerous days of Indian fighting on the border held him close at home, but the time came when he could resist the call no longer. He left home and took his way through the uncharted hills and forests to Kentucky.

At times he fought for his life with roving Indians, and at times he captained some small English garrison beset by the same red men. He won great renown as an Indian fighter, as a hunter, as an intrepid explorer.

The little town of Boonesborough was named for him, and he defended it through a long and perilous siege. But so soon as men came and built homes and staked out farms Boone must be moving west. What he sought was the wilderness; he was happiest in the great recesses of the woods, or blazing his own trail across untrodden prairies.

He led the vanguard into North Carolina, into West Virginia, into Kentucky, and then into Missouri. He is a splendid example of the man who must go first to prepare the way for others, in every way the best type of those brave, hardy pioneers who were claiming the continent for English-speaking people. The things he had most desired as a boy he most desired in manhood, the rough life of a new country and the struggle to overcome the perils of the wild.

VIII

John Paul Jones

The Boy of the Atlantic: 1747-1792

The summer afternoon was fair, and the waves that rolled upon the north sh.o.r.e of Solway Firth in the western Lowlands of Scotland were calm and even. But the tide was coming in, and inch by inch was covering the causeway that led from sh.o.r.e to a high rock some hundred yards away. The rock was bare of vegetation, and sheer on the landward side, but on the face toward the sea were rough jutting points that would give a climber certain footholds, and near the top smooth ledges.

On one or two of these ledges sea-gulls had built their nests, tucked in under projecting points where they would be sheltered from wind and rain. Now the gulls would sweep in from sea, curving in great circles until they reached their homes, and then would sit on the ledge calling to their mates across the water. Except for the cries of the gulls, however, the rock was very quiet. The lazy regular beat of the waves about its base was very soothing. On the longest ledge, below the sea-gulls' nests, lay a boy about twelve years old, sound asleep, his face turned toward the ocean.

Either the gulls' cries or the sun, now slanting in the west, disturbed him. He did not open his eyes, but he clenched his fists, and muttered incoherently. Presently with a start he awoke. He rubbed his eyes, and then sat up. "What a queer dream!" he said aloud.

The ledge where he sat was not a very safe place. There was scarcely room for him to move, and directly below him was the sea. But this boy was quite as much at home on high rocks or in the water as he was on land, and he was very fond of looking out for distant sailing vessels and wondering where they might be bound.

He glanced along the north sh.o.r.e to the little fis.h.i.+ng hamlet of Arbigland where he lived. He saw that the tide had come in rapidly while he slept, and that the path to the sh.o.r.e was now covered. He stood up and stretched his bare arms, brown with sunburn, high over his head.

Then he started to climb down from the ledge by the jutting points of rock.

He was as sure-footed as any mountaineer. His clothes were old, so neither rock nor sea could do them much harm; his feet were bare. He was short but very broad, and his muscles were strong and supple. When he came to the foot of the rock he stood a moment, hunting for the deepest pool at its base, then, loosing his hold, he dove into the water.

In a few seconds he was up again, floating on his back; and a little later he struck out, swimming hand over hand, toward a sandy beach to the south.

A young man, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant in the British navy, stood on the beach, watching the boy swim. When the latter had landed and shaken the water from him much as a dog would, the man approached him. "Where on earth did you come from, John Paul?" he asked with a laugh. "The first thing I knew I saw you swimming in from sea."

"I was out on the rock asleep," said the boy. "The tide came up and cut me off. And oh, Lieutenant Pearson, I had the strangest dream! I dreamt I was in the middle of a great sea-fight. I was captain of a s.h.i.+p, and her yard-arms were on fire, and we were pouring broadsides into the enemy, afraid any minute that we'd sink. How we did fight that s.h.i.+p!"

The young officer's eyes glowed. "And I hope you may some day, John!" he exclaimed.

"But the strangest part was that our s.h.i.+p didn't fly the English flag,"

said the boy. "At the masthead was a flag I'd never seen, red and white with a blue field filled with stars in the corner. What country's flag is that?"

Pearson thought for a moment. "There's no such flag," he said finally.

"I know them all, and there's none like that. The rest of your dream may come true, but not that about the flag. Come, let's be walking back to Arbigland."

Although John Paul's father came of peaceful farmer and fisher folk who lived about Solway Firth, his mother had been a "Highland la.s.sie,"

descended from one of the fighting clans in the Grampian Hills. The boy had much of the Highlander's love of wild adventure, and found it hard to live the simple life of the fis.h.i.+ng village. The sea appealed to him, and he much preferred it to the small Scotch parish school. His family were poor, and as soon as he was able he was set to steering fis.h.i.+ng yawls and hauling lines. At twelve he was as st.u.r.dy and capable as most boys at twenty.

Many men in Arbigland had heard John Paul beg his father to let him cross the Solway to the port of Whitehaven and s.h.i.+p on some vessel bound for America, where his older brother William had found a new home. But his father saw no opening for his younger son in such a life. All the way back to town that afternoon the boy told Lieutenant Pearson of his great desire, and the young officer said he would try to help him.

The boy's chance, however, came in another way. A few days later it chanced that Mr. James Younger, a big s.h.i.+p-owner, was on the landing-place of Arbigland when some of the villagers caught sight of a small fis.h.i.+ng yawl beating up against a stiff northeast squall, trying to gain the shelter of the little tidal-creek that formed the harbor of the town.

Mr. Younger looked long at the boat and then shook his head. "I don't think she'll do it," he said dubiously.

Yet the boat came on, and he could soon see that the only crew were a man and a boy. The boy was steering, handling the sheets and giving orders, while the man simply sat on the gunwale to trim the boat.

"Who's the boy?" asked the s.h.i.+p-owner.

"John Paul," said a bystander. "That's his father there."

Mr. Younger looked at the man pointed out, who was standing near, and who did not seem to be in the least alarmed. "Are you the lad's father?"

he asked.

The man looked up and nodded. "Yes, that's my boy John conning the boat," said he. "He'll fetch her in. This isn't much of a squall for him!"

The father spoke with truth. The boy handled his small craft with such skill that he soon had her alongside the wharf. As soon as John Paul had landed Mr. Younger stepped up to the father and asked to be introduced to the son. Then the s.h.i.+p-owner told him how much he had admired his seamans.h.i.+p, and asked if he would care to sail as master's apprentice in a new vessel he owned, which was fitting out for a voyage to Virginia and the West Indies. The boy's eyes danced with delight; he begged his father to let him go, and finally Mr. Paul consented. The twelve-year-old boy had won his wish to go to sea.

A few days later the brig _Friends.h.i.+p_ sailed from Whitehaven, with small John Paul on board, and after a slow voyage which lasted thirty-two days dropped anchor in the Rappahannock River of Virginia.

The life of a colonial trader was very pleasant in 1760. The sailing-vessels usually made a triangular voyage, taking some six months to go from England to the colonies, then to the West Indies, and so east again. About three of the six months were spent at the small settlements on sh.o.r.e, discharging goods from England, taking on board cotton and tobacco, and bartering with the merchants.

The Virginians, who lived on their great plantations with many servants, were the most hospitable people in the world, always eager to entertain a stranger, and the English sailors were given the freedom of the sh.o.r.e.

The _Friends.h.i.+p_ anch.o.r.ed a short distance down the river from where John Paul's older brother lived, and the boy immediately went to see him and stayed as his guest for some time.

This brother William had been adopted by a wealthy planter named Jones, and the latter was delighted with the young John Paul, and tried to get him to leave the sailor's life and settle on the Rappahannock. But much as John liked the easy life of the plantation, the fine riding horses, the wide fields and splendid rivers, the call of the sea was dearer to him, and when the _Friends.h.i.+p_ dropped down the Rappahannock bound for Tobago and the Barbadoes he was on board of her.