Author's Note

In writing a biography of a person who lived long ago, an author must first find out every single fact which is available. I start with simple facts: where and when the subject was born, the places he lived, his family, his education, his achievements. Even his death is included, for the way an individual dies sometimes tells a good deal about his character.

All these facts make a starting point, but not an interesting biography. Now I learn all I can about the times, the places, the other people in the character's life. This means I read a great deal of history, geography, and other biographies, both of the subject and of people who had some association with him.

I read, too, a great deal about subjects which were interesting to the person whose biography I am writing. In the case of Daniel Boone, this meant much reading about wild animals, birds, and wild woodlands, about rivers and mountains of his beloved wilderness. In my mind's eye I can plainly see the great forest, the log-cabin home, the high mountains, the salt water boiling on a snowy day.

After a while, I begin to feel that I really know the hero, in this case, Daniel Boone. I am familiar enough with his background to guess safely what he might have said or done on certain occasions.

None of the important incidents in this story are "made up". Only the direct quotes are imagined. There are not too many of them because Daniel Boone was not a talkative man.

I hope this story will make him seem very real and alive to you so that when you travel through the beautiful land which he explored, you may seem to hear the words he really said: "It is a beautiful land; an earthly Paradise!"

Miriam Mason