VOL. XXVIII.-No. 165.-T

the people would regard Kenton as a prodigy of ignorance.

He was undoubtedly an ignorant young man, but he was "a man for a' that ;" and though he could not appreciate the literary graces of Addison and Pope, his soul was fully open to the impressions of female beauty, and at the age of sixteen he was the declared admirer of one of the most attractive of the neighboring belles. His suit, however, was not prosperous, and he soon found that a young farmer named Leitchman (much his senior) was his favored rival. On him, therefore, he resolved to take vengeance, and for that purpose sought a fight in which he got terribly thrashed. The next year, however, finding himself six feet high he determined to hazard another engagement. His challenge was promptly accepted, and the two retired to a solitary spot in the woods, resolved that the combat should be à l'outrance. The struggle was desperate, and Kenton was again on the point of defeat when luckily he succeeded in suddenly winding his antagonist's long queue round a sapling. The victory thus acquired he so unmercifully abused as to stretch his enemy senseless upon the field of battle. Fierce as a tiger when enraged, Kenton was a humane man, and he no sooner found that resistance had ceased, and beheld his foeman lying apparently dead at his feet, than all his anger subsided and he strove by every means in his power to restore him to consciousness, but in vain. Struck with remorse, and fearful of the consequences of his rash deed, he fled from the spot, and without even returning to his father's house, made his way over the Blue Ridge into the valley of Virginia.

DANIEL MORGAN.

Here, where Daniel, afterward General, Morgan had once reigned supreme at horse-races and log-rollings, and where the name of Battletown still attests the unusual pugnacity of the people, our hero probably found ample opportunities for the display of his natural combativeness. He

his name to Butler, and by that alone was known among his new acquaintances. But the disguise was imperfect, and learning that his family had discovered his place of retreat, and intended reclaiming him by force, and still believing himself to be the slayer of Leitchman, he determined to elude both paternal and civil authority by penetrating yet farther toward that mysterious West, which was just then beginning to exercise its fascination over the restless population of the border.

Accordingly we next hear of him as a hunter and trapper, ranging along the water-courses from Cheat River to Fort Pitt, then the outpost of civilization toward the Northwest. Here he learned for the first time that Leitchman had recovered from his injuries and married the lady for whose sake he had suffered them. This news, we may well suppose, lightened our young woodman's conscience without much wounding his heart; at any rate, it produced no disposition in him to return to the haunts of his boyish loves and battles.

He had now heard from a young man who had for some time been a prisoner among the Indians some extravagant descriptions of a magnificent "land of cane," lying somewhere to the southwest of the Ohio; a land whose unfailing vegetation was browsed by thousands of deer and elk, and around whose numerous salt-licks were to be seen herds more numerous than those of all the graziers in the settlements combined. This hunters' elysium Kenton longed to behold with his own eyes, and toward it his thoughts were henceforth entirely directed. No captive Jew ever panted more ardently after the remembered glories of Sion than did Kenton after those of this new land, which he knew only by vague reports, and had beheld only in his dreams. The inspiration that made him a pioneer was as strong and as real as that which made Pitt an orator and Burns a poet. At last he resolved to visit this enchanted region in person, and for this purpose united himself with his informant, Yager, and another young man named Strader. Yager had little idea where was the country which he had visited when a boy; but he felt sure that he would be able to identify the point at which the Indians were accustomed to cross the Ohio in their hunting expeditions into Kaintuck-ee. With this meagre itinerary as a guide these three youths launched their canoe at the mouth of the Great Kanawoh, and began their adventurous journey into regions seldom seen by white men, three years before Boone led the first company of settlers over the Cumberland Mountains. Two years before Boone himself had penetrated the mysterious country by its southern gate; but of this Kenton was entirely ignorant. Day after day the three floated down the current of the lonely river, and at length reached the site of the present village of Manchester. Here Yager, who had failed to recognize the point which he had described, declared that they must have passed it in the night. They there