his dimmed eye, could not reach.  It was in vain that the sights were made more conspicuous by shreds of white paper.  No vigor of will can repair the irresistible influence of age.  And however the heart and juvenile remembrances of Boone might follow these brisk and talkative hunters to the Rocky mountains and the Western sea, the sad consciousness that years were stronger than the subduer of bears and Indians, came over his mind like a cloud.

Other sorrows came also with age.  In March, 1813, he had the misfortune to lose his wife.  She had been to him a faithful companion—­participating the same heroic and generous nature with himself.  She had followed him from North Carolina into the far wilderness, without a road or even a trace to guide their way—­surrounded at every step by wild beasts and savages, and was one of the first white women in the state of Kentucky.  She had united her fate to his, and in all his hardships, perils, and trials, had stood by him, a meek, yet courageous and affectionate friend.  She was now taken from him in his old age, and he felt for a time, that he was alone in the world, and that the principal tie to his own existence was sundered.

About this time, too, the British war with its influence upon the savage auxiliaries of Britain, extended even to the remote forests of Missouri, which rendered the wandering life of a hunter extremely dangerous.  He was no longer able to make one of the rangers who pursued the Indians.  But he sent numerous substitutes in his children and neighbors.

After the death of his wife, he went to reside with his son Major Nathan Boone, and continued to make his home there until his death.  After the peace he occupied himself in hunting, trapping, and exploring the country—­being absent sometimes two or three months at a time—­solacing his aged ear with the music of his young days—­the howl of the nocturnal wolf—­and the war song of the prowling savages, heard far away from the companionship of man.

When the writer lived in St. Charles, in 1816, Colonel Boone, with the return of peace, had resumed his Kentucky habits.  He resided, as has been observed, with his son on the Missouri—­surrounded by the plantations of his children and connections—­occasionally farming, and still felling the trees for his winter fire into his door yard; and every autumn, retiring to the remote and moon-illumined cities of the beavers, for the trapping of which, age had taken away none of his capabilities.  He could still, by the aid of paper on his rifle sights, bring down an occasional turkey; at the salt licks, he still waylaid the deer; and he found and cut down bee-trees as readily as in his morning days.  Never was old age more green, or gray hairs more graceful.  His high, calm, bold forehead seemed converted by years, into iron.  Decay came to him without infirmity, palsy, or pain—­and surrounded and cherished by kind friends, he died as he had lived, composed and tranquil.  This event took place in the year 1818, and in the eighty-fourth year of his age.