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.
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