hurt2

This is a matter about which many have speculated. Boone's travels in Kentucky seem to have been confined to the present eastern, central, and northern counties of the state. There is not a particular story or tradition which will bear out an assertion that he was ever at any time within the limits of Adair County. Considering his love for hunting, much of it alone, throughout Kentucky, it is not at all improbable that he passed through Adair County at some time or other. Like the Long Hunters and others of their kind, he oftentimes left a record of the places of his wandering through inscriptions cut by him into the bark of trees. Many of the early hunters in the state seem to have had a penchant for inscribing their names upon the trees in the forest at points where they made camps or sojourned for even so much as a night. The Long Hunters left such a record engraven upon the trees all the way from Cumberland Gap to Bowling Green. Boone and a companion, whose name was McGray, appear to have made such a record of the fact that they were in Adair County in the year 1773. Upon a beech tree which stood upon the lands formerly owned by Washington Smith six miles west of Columbia, forty years ago, and prior thereto, there were pictures which had been cut into the bark of the tree, of various beasts of the forest and a tomahawk. The words, "D. Boone, 1773" and "_____ McGray, 1773" were also cut into the bark of the tree. The initial of the Christian name of McGray could not be deciphered or read by reason of the growths in the bark, which came from great age in the inscriptions on the bark of a beech tree. The inscription had the appearance of being very aged. Of course, such inscription could be the handiwork of persons other than Boone and McGray; and on account of Boone's notoriety, it would not be improbable that some dreamer may perchance have made the inscription for him but for the same reason it is not probable that anyone should have inscribed the name McGray upon the tree with the date 1773. The circumstance is given for what it is worth.