Daniel Boone will always occupy a unique place in American history as the archetype of thehunter and wilderness wanderer. He was a true pioneer, and stood at the head of that class ofIndian-fighters, game-hunters, forest-fellers, and backwoods farmers who, generation after generation,pushed westward the border of civilization from the Alleghenies to the Pacific. As he himself said, hewas "an instrument ordained of God to settle the wilderness." Born in Pennsylvania, he drifted southinto western North Carolina, and settled on what was then the extreme frontier. There he married, builta log cabin, and hunted, chopped trees, and tilled the ground like any other frontiersman. TheAlleghany Mountains still marked a boundary beyond which the settlers dared not go； for west of themlay immense reaches of frowning forest, uninhabited by bands of warlike Indians. Occasionally someventuresome hunter or trapper penetrated this immense wilderness, and returned with strange stories ofwhat he had seen and done.          In 1769 Boone, excited by these vague and wondrous tales, determined himself to cross themountains and find out what manner of land it was that lay beyond. With a few chosen companions heset out, making his own trail through the gloomy forest. After weeks of wandering, he at last emergedinto the beautiful and fertile country of Kentucky, for which, in after years, the red men and the whitestrove with such obstinate fury that it grew to be called "the dark and bloody ground." But when Boonefirst saw it, it was a fair and smiling land of groves and glades and running waters, where the openforest grew tall and beautiful, and where innumerable herds of game grazed, roaming ceaselessly to andfro along the trails they had trodden during countless generations. Kentucky was not owned by anyIndian tribe, and was visited only by wandering war-parties and hunting-parties who came from amongthe savage nations living north of the Ohio or south of the Tennessee.
        A roving war-party stumbled upon one of Boone's companions and killed him, and the others thenleft Boone and journeyed home； but his brother came out to join him, and the two spent the wintertogether. Self-reliant, fearless, and the frowning defiles of Cumberland Gap, they were attacked byIndians, and driven back-two of Boone's own sons being slain.
        In 1775, however, he made another attempt； and this attempt was successful. The Indians attackedthe newcomers； but by this time the parties of would-be settlers were sufficiently numerous to holdtheir own. They beat back the Indians, and built rough little hamlets, surrounded by log stockades, atBoonesborough and Harrodsburg； and the permanent settlement of Kentucky had begun.
        The next few years were passed by Boone amid unending Indian conflicts. He was a leader amongthe settlers, both in peace and in war. At one time he represented them in the House of Burgesses ofVirginia； at another time he was a member of the first little Kentucky parliament itself； and he becamea colonel of the frontier militia. He tilled the land, and he chopped the trees himself； he helped to buildthe cabins and stockades with his own hands, wielding the long-handled, light-headed frontier ax asskillfully as other frontiersmen. His main business was that of surveyor, for his knowledge of thecountry, and his ability to travel through it, in spite of the danger from Indians, created much demandfor his services among people who wished to lay off tracts of wild land for their own future use.
        But whatever he did, and wherever he went, he had to be sleeplessly on the lookout for his Indianfoes. When he and his fellows tilled the stump-dotted fields of corn, one or more of the party werealways on guard, with weapon at the ready, for fear of lurking savages. When he went to the House ofBurgesses he carried his long rifle, and traversed roads not a mile of which was free from the danger ofIndian attack. The settlements in the early years depended exclusively upon game for their meat, andBoone was the mightiest of all the hunters, so that upon him devolved the task of keeping his peoplesupplied. He killed many buffaloes, and pickled the buffalo beef for use in winter. He killed great  numbers of black bear, and made bacon of them, precisely as if they had been hogs. The commongame were deer and elk. At that time none of the hunters of Kentucky would waste a shot on anythingso small as a prairie-chicken or wild duck； but they sometimes killed geese and swans when they camesouth in winter and lit on the rivers.
【題組】36. In Paragraph 1, why do the authors include the information that the Alleghany mountains serveas a kind of boundary to the frontier?
(A) To make a statement about geo-politics
(B) To show how brave and unique Daniel Boone was since he lived beyond it.
(C) As a commentary on the relative bravery of frontiersmen.
(D) To show the pros and cons of different areas for living and exploring.[!--empirenews.page--]