In after years, Gasper Mansker, the old German scout, was accustomed to describe with comic effect the consternation created among the Long Hunters, while hunting one day on Green River, by a singular noise which they could not explain.

Stealthily slipping from tree to tree, Mansker finally beheld with mingled surprise and amusement a hunter, bareheaded, stretched flat upon his back on a deerskin spread on the ground, singing merrily at the top of his voice! It was Daniel Boone, joyously whiling away the solitary hours in singing one of his favorite songs of the border.

In March, 1771, after spending some time in company with the Long Hunters, the Boones, their horses laden with furs, set their faces homeward.

On their return journey, near Cumberland Gap, they had the misfortune to be surrounded by a party of Indians who robbed them of their guns and all their peltries.

With this humiliating conclusion to his memorable tour of exploration, Daniel Boone, as he himself says, "once more reached home after experiencing hardships which would defy credulity in the recital." Despite the hardships and the losses, Boone had achieved the ambition of years: he had seen Kentucky, which he "esteemed a second paradise." The reports of his extended explorations, which he made to Judge Henderson, were soon communicated to the other partners of the land company; and their letters of this period, to one another, bristle with glowing and minute descriptions of the country, as detailed by their agent.