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 CHAPTER V

N the nineteenth of April, 1775, the rumble of the running fire at Lexington and Concord told that the farmers of New England had at last precipitated the struggle which had been impending for a full generation. It was a roar that, truly, was "heard round the world."

One day later, April 20, 1775, Colonel Henderson and his fellow-pioneers of the Transylvania Company reached Boonesborough; there they were joyfully received by a running fire of five and twenty muskets discharged by Boone's vanguard, which had preceded them to cut the road. If the musket-shot behind the New England stone walls was heard round the world, the rattle of that score of muskets in distant Kentucky was heard around a continent. The former uttered a hoarse defiance to tyrants—a cry to God for liberty; what