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Observing these early propensities for the life of a hunter in his son, and land having become dear and game scarce in the neighborhood where he lived, Boone's father formed the design of removing to remote forests, not yet disturbed by the sound of the axe, or broken by frequent clearings; and having heard a good account of the country bordering upon the Yadkin river, in North Carolina, he resolved to remove thither.
But the forest remained mute and kept its impenetrable secret. Only here and there, groups of trees, lower than the surrounding ones, and between them spaces of ground, which had evidently once been clearings and were not yet totally re-covered by jungle growth, gave proof of Sakai nomadism even in other ages. No other sign of the past, and my query, perhaps absurd, repeats itself.
The curious story of "Johnny Appleseed" is given us by historians, who tell us of this semi-religious enthusiast who roamed barefoot over the wilds of Ohio and Indiana a century ago, sowing apple-seeds in the scattered clearings, and living to see the trees bearing fruit, selections from which probably are interwoven among the varieties of today.
With such talk Jabez relieved their journey until they came to a side-road, which was a mere bridle-path. Up this they turned, passing through solid bush. It was a bright, hot day in the clearings, but under the trees it was gloomy and chill, with a moist odor of vegetation which was grateful to the master, and this was his first experience of the bush.
I am inclined to believe that the latter is the case, as cultivation and the clearings of the forest proceed; for I have observed within fifteen years the total drying up of streamlets by the removal of the forest, and these streamlets had evidently once been rivulets and even rivers of some size, as their banks, cut through alluvial soils, plainly indicated.
They leave the track and try across country with a gambler's desperatin, for it seems as if it were impossible to make the situation worse; and, for the next hour, go scrambling from boulder to boulder, or plod along paths that are now no more than rivulets, and across waste clearings where the scattered shells and broken fir-trees tell all too plainly of the cannon in the distance.
He never again got a chance to shoot at them, though more than once he saw the same two tracks, or believed they were the same, as for some cause never yet explained, Deer were scarcer in that unbroken forest than they were in later years when clearings spread around.
How dare he pepper science with his small-talk? But it is our fault we admire his volubility." "Oh," said Fanny, with a glance of defiance at Miss Gale, "if we are to talk nothing but science, it will be a weary world." After the village there was a long, gradual ascent of about a mile, and then they entered a new country. It was a series of woods and clearings, some grass, some arable.
A few rude huts are scattered through the valley, but they are tenanted only for a few days in the year, when their owners come to gather and roast the mandioca of their small clearings. We used generally to take with us two boys one negro, the other Indian to carry our provisions for the day; a few pounds of beef or dried fish, farinha and bananas, with plates, and a kettle for cooking.
In the first decade or two after the London Company's end the plantation and farm clearings broke the Virginian wilderness only in a narrow line on either bank of the James River from its mouth to near the present site of Richmond, and in a small district on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake.
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