Hale went to the old
Transylvania University at Lexington, the first seat of learning
planted beyond the Alleghanies. He was fond of history, of the
sciences and literature, was unusually adept in Latin and Greek,
and had a passion for mathematics. He was graduated with honours,
he taught two years and got his degree of Master of Arts, but the
pioneer spirit in his blood would still out, and his polite
learning he then threw to the winds.
Other young Kentuckians had gone West in shoals, but he kept his
eye on his own State, and one autumn he added a pick to the old
compass and the ancestral chain, struck the Old Wilderness Trail
that his grandfather had travelled, to look for his own fortune in
a land which that old gentleman had passed over as worthless. At
the Cumberland River he took a canoe and drifted down the river
into the wild coal-swollen hills. Through the winter he froze,
starved and prospected, and a year later he was opening up a
region that became famous after his trust and inexperience had let
others worm out of him an interest that would have made him easy
for life.
With the vision of a seer, he was as innocent as Boone.
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