George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

[366] To this territory, Daniel Boone, with a body of en-

Chap. XXXV.} 1775. May.

terprising companions, proceeded at once to mark out a path up Powell's valley; and through mountains and cane-brakes beyond. On the twenty-fifth of the month they were waylaid by Indians, who killed two men and wounded another very severely. Two days later the savages killed and scalped two more. ‘Now,’ wrote Daniel Boone, ‘is the time to keep the country while we are in it. If we give way now, it will ever be the case,’ and he pressed forward to the Kentucky river. There, on the first day of April, at the distance of about sixty yards from its west bank, near the mouth of Otter Creek, he began a stockade fort; which took the name of Boonesborough. At that place, while the congress at Philadelphia was groping irresolutely in the dark, seventeen men assembled as representatives of the four

May 25.

‘towns’ that then formed the seed of the state. Among these children of nature was Daniel Boone, the pioneer of the party. His colleague, Richard Galloway, was one of the founders of Kentucky and one of its early martyrs. The town of St. Asaph sent John Floyd, a surveyor who emigrated from southwestern Virginia; an able writer, respected for his culture and dignity of manner; of innate good breed ing; ready to defend the weak; to follow the trail of the savage; heedless of his own life if he could recover women and children who had been made captive; destined to do good service, and survive the dangers of western life till American independence should be fought for and won.

From the settlement at Boiling Spring came James Harrod, the same who, in 1774, had led a