University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

The character of Balcombe's adventure was
such as to make him a favourite with the ladies,
and to give him the entreé of their cabin. In this
arrangement I was easily included, and we passed
many of the hours of our long voyage in pleasant
conversation with them. Frequently, too, we
used our privilege as the means of securing us a
pleasant seat on the stern gallery of the boat, where

we could converse without interruption. Here
Balcombe occasionally entertained me with histories
of his wild adventures on the Spanish frontier,
during the tumultuous occurrences of Taledo's insurrection,
in which he had taken a part. I could
not help remarking my surprise that he had ever
returned to peaceful life, instead of ending his
days in scenes so rife with pleasurable excitement,
and to which his peculiar talents so well fitted
him.

“You are mistaken there, William,” said he; “I
have little doubt I should have been now roaming
the wilderness in quest of adventures, had I not
been deficient in an indispensable faculty.”

“What is that?” said I.

“I believe,” he replied, “the phrenologists call
it the organ of locality. I have no recollection of
place. It was this defect that caused the loss of
life in the action I detailed to you in Missouri.
Had I seen the ground, which I had traversed
times without number, with the mind's eye, as I saw
it on the spot, I have little doubt I should have given
the captain such timely advice as would have
saved him and his men. All that I can do is to
look with a soldier's eye on what is actually before
me. But to remember places exactly as they are,
and to recognise them when I see them, is not
given to me. That is the faculty of these pilots.
When their watch comes, they rouse themselves,
look out, and know at once where they are. Keizer
has it. Turn him into the hills here, and he

would come back to the river as certainly and
directly as a stone falls to the earth. On reaching
it, too, he would know at a glance whether he had
ever been there before.

“It was this that made Daniel Boon so remarkable
a man. He was otherwise distinguished for
nothing but a strange compound of quiet and restlessness.
He loved solitude, and was one of the
mildest and most peaceable men I ever knew.”

“You knew him, then?”

“Oh yes; very well. He is now living not very
far from me in Missouri. I could tell you instances
in which this faculty has displayed itself in a manner
that really seemed miraculous.”

He went on to speak of these, and mentioned
one which I hope the reader will pardon me for
detailing. Coming to me from the lips of an eyewitness,
I regard it as authentic enough to deserve
a place in my story.

“Forty years ago,” said Balcombe, “Daniel
Boon was much employed to make locations of
land in Kentucky. Being in the midst of danger,
he was obliged to devise means to fix the locality
of each tract without marking lines around it. His
plan was to mark a corner, declare the quantity,
and that it was laid off in a square, the diagonal
of which was in a given direction. Nothing could
be more precise than this; it identified the land as
certainly as a mathematical point. The difficulty
was to find the corner tree, where its place was
not indicated by notorious natural objects.

“This difficulty brought many of Boon's locations
into dispute. He had made some such in a
part of the country in which ten years ago there
were still but few inhabitants, and which he had
not visited for thirty years. About that time they
became a subject of litigation. I had purchased
one of them. Colonel Boon lived at a distance,
and was very old. Joining with those circumstanced
like myself, we raised a sum of money
sufficient to compensate him for his long journey.
Our title to something was indisputable—but what
was it? Our locations were the oldest in the country,
and all others must give way to them—but
where were they? These questions he alone
could answer.

“Having drawn him from his distant home, all
concerned travelled with him to the part of the
country where the lands were said to lie. Our
first object was to find the corner of a friend of
mine. The old man went to the nearest of the
old stations, as they were called, and from thence
set out, followed by the rest of us. Our care was
to observe, but not to interrupt him. We trusted
him as the sportsman trusts his pointer. He took
his course, and travelled many miles into the wilderness,
apparently musing, and closely observing
every object. Towards the close of the day he
was seen to stop, look around, and meditate with
an air of long abstraction. At length, speaking
rather to himself than to us, he said, in short sentences,
pausing and musing between,

“`I know this place. The night before I established
that corner I camped here. It rained that
day, and two of my men, when they shot off their
rifles to clean them, fired them at a mark on a
beech tree, somewhere there.'

“He pointed as he said this, and we, following
the direction of his hand, found a beech, on the
bark of which were two small round swelling
spots, near enough to each other to have been
made by shots fired at the same mark. We cut
into the tree, and found two balls. The rings in
the wood showed that the wounds had been given
in the same year in which the location was made.
Now, I assure you I saw nothing in that spot by
which I could have distinguished it from a hundred
I had passed that day.

“At length we moved on, and in half a mile
reached a little open space, perhaps twenty or
thirty yards across. Here again Boon stopped,
and again speaking as before, said,

“`I know this place. We stopped here to dry
our blankets and get our breakfasts. John Henderson
marked his name on one of these trees.
While we staid here Andrew Jones went out and
shot a deer close by. The corner is about two
miles from here.'

“As soon as this was said we began to look for
Henderson's name, but we looked in vain. We
then took the course indicated by the old man, to
see if we could find any trace of Jones; and we
actually found his initials A. J. on a tree. We

now resumed our search for the other name.
There stood, on the margin of the open space, the
remains of a tree, the top of which had been
broken off, ten or twelve feet from the ground.
The trunk was decayed and covered with moss.
This was now stripped off, and beneath was the
name of John Henderson, at full length. The old
man now resumed his course, and, plunging into
the forest, brought us, in two or three miles, to a
tree, answering, point by point, to the description
in his entry of location.[1]

“It is this faculty,” continued Balcombe, “which
makes the boundless waste of forest or prairie
familiar as the home of his childhood, that qualifies
a man to excel in the wild enterprises to which
I was too prone. Wanting it, I was forced to use
those who possessed it. There is my man John,
whom I caught young, (for he was a boy at the
time,) and tamed to my uses. He was to me, in
this respect, what the horse is to the man. But I
could not always have him with me; and alone I
was a fool, and no match for a native centaur of
the wild.”

I could fill a volume with strange and interesting
narratives with which Balcombe amused me, during
our long though rapid journey. The journey
itself was not without incident, but only such as
can hardly fail to happen to every traveller in a

route of a thousand miles. But every one may
make the same trip for himself; and, among our
people, roaming like Tartars over this vast continent,
there are few who have not made or will not
make it. But the adventures I have detailed, and
those which yet remain to be told, are such as do
not happen to every man; and no man would encounter
them by choice.