In the strongly marked frontier character no traits were more pronounced than the dislike of crowding and the tendency to roam to and fro, hither and thither, always with a westward trend.  Boone, the typical frontiersman, embodied in his own person the spirit of loneliness and restlessness which marked the first venturers into the wilderness.  He had wandered in his youth from Pennsylvania to Carolina, and, in the prime of his strength, from North Carolina to Kentucky.  When Kentucky became well settled in the closing years of the century, he crossed into Missouri, that he might once more take up his life where he could see the game come out of the woods at nightfall, and could wander among trees untouched by the axe of the pioneer.  An English traveller of note who happened to encounter him about this time has left an interesting account of the meeting.  It was on the Ohio, and Boone was in a canoe, alone with his dog and gun, setting forth on a solitary trip into the wilderness to trap beaver.  He would not even join himself to the other travellers for a night, preferring to plunge at once into the wild, lonely life he so loved.  His strong character and keen mind struck the Englishman, who yet saw that the old hunter belonged to the class of pioneers who could never themselves civilize the land, because they ever fled from the face of the very civilization for which they had made ready the land.  In Boone’s soul the fierce impatience of all restraint burned like a fire.  He told the Englishman that he no longer cared for Kentucky, because its people had grown too easy of life; and that he wished to move to some place where men still lived untrammelled and unshackled, and enjoyed uncontrolled the free blessings of nature. [Footnote:  Francis Bailey’s “Journal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North America in 1796 and 1797,” p. 234.] The isolation of his life and the frequency with which he changed his abode brought out the frontiersman’s wonderful capacity to shift for himself, but it hindered the development of his power of acting in combination with others of his kind.  The first comers to the new country were so restless and so intolerant of the presence of their kind, that as neighbors came in they moved ever westward.  They could not act with their fellows.

    The Permanent Settlers. 
    Efforts to Provide Schooling.

Of course in the men who succeeded the first pioneers, and who were the first permanent settlers, the restlessness and the desire for a lonely life were much less developed.  These men wandered only until they found a good piece of land, and took up claims on this land, not because the country was lonely, but because it was fertile.  They hailed with joy the advent of new settlers and the upbuilding of a little market town in the neighborhood.  They joined together eagerly in the effort to obtain schools for their children.  As yet there were no public schools supported by government in any part