Kill, kill! bid husbands die that wives may weep! Teach sons and daughters hate and curses! tear Babes from the breast for vultures! spoil! destroy! Till waste and slaughter force affrighted realms To shriek your fame!'-Thus do the war-dogs howl. Friends of the free in spirit, folly's foes, Denizens of the world of intellect, Virtue's applauders, lovers of all power. In meekness, advocates of truth-whate'er The land ye tread, the air ye breathe--to you, At this grand era, I, a simple bard, Weak in resources, only strong in love, Urge my brief plea-the might of gentleness.

Ye're not your own. All things which vice can sink
Or virtue raise have part in you, the plant
Ye rear and care for, and all-potent mind,
Which lives but by you, with you, for you. Oh!
Will ye forego your high vocation's end,
Though your inauguration be of Heaven,
And suffer murd'rous error to sweep on,
Uncheck'd, unmark'd, because the gaudy fiend,
Fashion, strews dazzling baubles on its path?
'Vengeance,' the cities shout; and wisdom seeks
A home with contemplation, in the shade:
War!' and destruction roars till echo gives
To fairest solitudes the ugliness

Of strife. and not a rood but bears of blood
Some fearful token. And who, blotting out
The law, Thou shalt not kill,' give God the lie,
And goad us on to murder?-earth's real lords--
The tillers of the soil, art's thoughtful sons,
Whose hands are puissant, whose hearts are brave;
Or brainless nobles, who, too seldom seen,
Too often heard of, pass their useless years

In plotting our confusion-who exclaim,
Die for thy country,' while they live for self!
Oh, we are scorn'd by slaves, whose scope of wit

Is but the cunning of an idiot!

peace,

And should we brook that princes-things, perchance,
Which neither heed nor know us-idly spend
The purchase of our strength on bickerings
Bred of vague humours, or-while, gall'd we feed,
The doubly-vile dependant, avarice-
Cry, Danger,' in the safest days of
And mock us with pretences? Striplings, born
To strut in feathers, and abuse the word
'Courage,' till, tired of toys, they fret themselves
Into their graves, forgiven and forgotten,
Or grey-beard courtiers, shaking feeble heads,
May smile at our long effort to oppose

This strange oppression, and pronounce us fools:
But we are arm'd with knowledge, nerve, and faith;
Are rich, though wretched; daring, though despised;
And, led by justice, must at length prevail.

Let them ery Might is right,'-the might is ours! Believe this paradox, or doubt my tale:

Beneath a lowly roof, around a hearth,
Cheerful, though homely, gather'd in grave talk,
A little group of labourers are cheating
Their leisure moments of monotony.

Plying her evening care, the housewife treads
With cautious silence, stopping oft, to peer
Into the countenance of one calm man,
Who, seemingly absorb'd by other themes,
Hath mark'd their argument, and, taking up
Its broken thread, now leads them through the maze
Of feeling, on to pure benevolence.

He reasons high, until the cottage clock
Concludes the conference; then, shaking hands,
Wishes his poor apostles a good night;
Closes the door, and sits, to muse again.

And now a new day's dawn is brightly breaking,
And old employments claim the waking cares
Of struggling millions. In a smithy's gloom,
Moving among their trade's rough implements,
A band of men, already at their toil,
Improve the hour, while richer mortals rest
From mean debauchery or sage debate.
Standing before a forge's fitful glare,
The fireside teacher of last might pursues

His dingy calling; with an action quick
And steady, moulds the metal to his will;
And, pausing not,--save once, when, in swift showers,
Sparks from the anvil spread about the scene,

To shut up in his brain some sudden hint
For subsequent reflection,-doth appear
Form'd for unceasing labour.

'Weeks and months

Have pass'd; and that poor blacksmith is the guest
And glory of the nations. Monarchs hear,
With wonder, his meek mission; and the shouts
Of hoping myriads, from each shore which bounds
The broad Atlantic, tell the selfish few
That all the people praise him: for he speaks
The still sublimity of that one thought
Which is his being-universal peace-
Till scarce a loving wish that's borne above
But with it bears for him some ardent prayer."
And such, with few exceptions, was the course
Of dauntless genius in ev'ry age:
The wise are nurtured in the lap of care:
The strong of heart are from the school of toil
The peaceful are the strong; and gentleness
Aye marks the mighty arm or giant soul.
And shall we, traitors to the holy cause
Which hath upheld us, hear the paltry lie
With patience, which holds passion forth as pover;
Calls riches, birth, or rank, *acknowledged right;"
And talks of sweet revenge?-say, injured honour!
War Tis the knave's resource, the madman's joy,
The sage's grief, the outcast's sepulchre,
The widow's curse--the great abomination!
It beggars hope, makes charity a jest,
Mars beauty, ministers to ignorance,
And trifles with existence. But the voice

Which rules its fate is yours. Ye know its crimes;
Act as for Heaven-before posterity.

Ask not, like cowards, liberty to love;

But calmly, firmly say, We'll fight no more:'
And, while around our standard, bold, ye crowd,
Cry, God for freedom, harmony, and truth!'

DANIEL BOONE,

THE KENTUCKY HUNTER.

THE more we become acquainted with the history of men who are said to live in a state of nature, the more do we become convinced of the fact that there is no natural state for man. Nature is unchangeable in her laws, and awards to the beaver, musk-rat, and wolf, a cycle of action from which neither of these creatures can diverge, but there is no such thing as terminability in man's condition; how ever savage the adult human being may be considered, we know that he must have progressed from a state of utter ignorant infancy into a state of knowledge, however rude, by a process of dependent education. The history of a rude child of the forest must possess as much interest to the philosopher as could the biography of the most cele brated academician. The former is the pioneer of philo

sophy, the gleaner of knowledge, the collector of facts in nature, which the casuist and analyser arranges and reduces to rule in his closet. Men, in the capacity of mere hunters of wild beasts, have added largely to our knowledge in zoology, botany, and other sciences, and, in addition to these contributions to education and civilisation, they have been the pioneers of social reclamation in the uncultured wilderness. The history of a nation is the history of a system of physical and mental accretion, rising gradually from the state of a rush-covered Rome, inhabited by latrones, to that of the city of Augustus, the mistress of the world. If we wish to form anything like a correct ides of those men who led the first migrations from Rome to the conquered provinces, in order to settle in and recaim them, and if we desire to imbibe right notions regarding the history of conquest and settlement in general, America furnishes us with plenty of palpable evidence of its character and nature; and in some of her bold and hardy hunters we are certain of beholding types of those semi-soldier agriculturists, who, with their consuls and prætors, went forth either to exterminate or subdue the German nations, and to take from them their native soil. Daniel Boone, the backwoodsman, and first explorer of Kentucky, is one of the finest specimens that American history furnishes of the bold and hardy settler of the wild. He is perhaps the very best example known of the frontierman, who, divided in his habits between those of his own race and that with which he comes in contact, pushes on from one conquest of the wild man and the wilderness to another, while slowly behind him sweeps the tide of a superior emigration. Many biographies have appeared of this remarkable man, all of them more or less erroneous or disfigured by fiction. The essential facts of the following sketch are derived from the Library of American Biography, and were obtained from the lips of the old hunter himself, being also corroborated by his many relations. Daniel Boone, the pioneer of Kentucky, was born in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, in the April of 1735. His father, named Squire Boone, had emigrated from England to the colonies, and his mother was seemingly of Irish origin, her name being Sarah Morgan. Daniel was the sixth of eleven children, seven sons and four daughters; and his father having removed from Bucks county, Pennsylvania, to Berks, in the same state, where game abounded, | and the red man still continued to dispute possession of his hunting grounds with the big-knife strangers, Boone Was early initiated into those habits, and that knowledge of Indian ways, which distinguished him through his long life. The homes of the frontier settlers are generally little cabins built of rough logs, and planted in the midst of clearings in which stand blackened stumps and corn-fields. Around these partial openings in the woody wild the forest extends for miles, closing the adventurous and hardy backwoodsman within a sylvan world, in which he has almost no companionship with man, and is necessitated to become a hunter and a grave and sedate lover of lonely nature. It was in such a position as this that Daniel Boone was placed in early boyhood, and it was here that be was educated to love solitude and nature, and to encounter with subtilty and cunning the wary and murderous Indian, as well as to hunt the game that so plentifully abounded. A migratory spirit seems to be a part of the frontier-man's nature; he shuns civilisation, as it is termed, as carefully as does the Indian-with this difference, however, that he hails the advance of his race and drives the aborigine back that his advancing nation may have a wider feld of action. When Boone was eighteen years of age, his father again removed from Berks to North Carolina, where he settled upon the banks of the Yadkin, a mountain stream in the north-western part of the latter state. Here he had plenty of scope for his favourite employment of hunting, and here too he married Rebecca Bryan, and ealtivated a farm for several years. The rapid increase population on the Yadkin caused a desire for exploratans of the wilderness, and Boone, who was early esteemed for his caution and sagacity, was engaged with a party of and speculators in looking for eligible positions for settle

ments in the yet unreclaimed wilderness. One party, of which Boone was leader, left the Yadkin and ranged through the valleys on the head-waters of the Holston, or northwestern part of Virginia, and in 1764 he led the first band of explorers to the Rock Castle, a branch of the Cumberland river, now within the state of Kentucky.

Boone has often been stigmatised as of an unsocial, morose nature, but such was not the fact. It is true that he preferred the forest to the city, but this was not because he was misanthropic, but simply because his education and early life gave him a bias for solitude, and his sense of simple rectitude made him reject the companionship of men who settled disputes, not according to the plain rules of justice, but the formula of law. In his social relations, he was affable, humane, and disinterested, and so utterly devoid of the egotism of selfishness that he never troubled himself to secure his property by the defined forms of law. He wrought for the community in the settlement of the state of Kentucky, and that too indefatigably and successfully, without so much as receiving the return of common justice. The frivolities and elegancies of polite life, which were cultivated to the detriment of plain truth and honesty, had no charms for him, so that he loved best to dwell in his rude home, amongst his unpolished hunter companions, where a promise required no affirmatory document to render it binding, and where he could best apply that physical and practical education which he had acquired in the woods.

Incited by the glowing reports of a hunter named John Finley, who had casually visited the country, Daniel Boone, in company with five others, left his home on the Yadkin, on the 1st of May, 1769, and set out for the wilds of Kentucky. This may be termed his first appearance upon the stage of back wood life-the precursory adventure to a long series of eventful and stirring incidents, which strikingly illustrate the character of the men who first planted the arts in the wilderness, and also apprise us of the danger of that experiment. On the 7th day of June, 1769, the six weary adventurers wound slowly up one of the rugged mountains in the wilderness of Kentucky. Their garments were those usually worn by forest-rangers. A huntingshirt and leggins of dressed deer-skins, together with a pair of mocassins and fur cap, made up the outer dress. A belt encircled each waist, in which was suspended the tomahawk, hunting-knife, powder-horn, and bullet-pouch; and over the shoulder lay the long rifle. Their journey had been long and toilsome, and nothing but the glowing laudations bestowed by Finley upon the region towards which they travelled could have sustained their spirits; and now, when they had gained the summit of the hill and could look around them, they found that his verbal descriptions were surpassed by the lovely country which lay below and around them. In a gorge of the mountain they made their camp, and commenced to hunt the buffalo and other wild animals, laying up their peltries and subsisting on their flesh. From the month of June until December, the party hunted in this solitary region without beholding the face of a single human being; it was a place to which even the young men of the Shawanoes only came periodically in order to procure food for their tribe.

In December, the six adventurers divided themselves

into two parties, in order to extend their researches and increase their chances of finding game. Boone and a man named Stewart formed one party, separating themselves from their four companions, and reaching the banks of the main Kentucky river on the 22d day of the month of December. The four adventurers were never heard of again; after being left by their friends they had indubitably fallen by the hands of the Indians, who now showed themselves in the territory, for as Boone and Stewart were descending the brow of a hill, towards nightfall, they were set upon and taken prisoners by a party of red-skins. To manifest dismay in such circumstances is to invite death, for to an Indian cowardice is an unpardonable offence. To evince calmness, and a trustful and easy deportment, is the sure means of winning respect and good treatment, for stoicism is an Indian virtue, and to seem pleased with

them is to flatter them, which is alike acceptable to sage and savage. Boone's consummate knowledge of Indian manners taught him at once to conceal his feelings of disappointment beneath the semblance of contentment, and as he was a strong athletic man, with all the necessary qualifications of a warrior, and all the attributes of a great hunter, they supposed, from his manner, that he and his companion might become by adoption powerful auxiliaries to their tribe. By adroitly complying with all their camping customs, and rendering themselves officiously service able, the two friends managed to lull the suspicions of the Indians to sleep, and securing their rifles, they one evening left their captors sunk in slumber, and, after a toil some flight, returned to their first camp, which they had the mortification to find plundered and deserted. Shortly after having returned to this their first rendezvous, they were joined by Squire Boone, a younger brother of Daniel, and a companion from Carolina, who brought a supply of ammunition to the hunters, and tidings of their families; but this party of four was soon broken up also by those casualties which are incidental to a sojourn in the woods. Daniel Boone and Stewart were attacked one day when returning to their camp, and the latter was shot and scalped by the Indians, while the former effected his escape. The companion of Squire Boone had wandered into the wilderness, from which he never returned, and the brothers were thus left alone. It must have required a great amount of that real firmness of purpose, which to our mind constitutes true courage, to have enabled these men to maintain their position in this vast and dangerous wilderness; yet they had no desire to leave their huntingground on account of the death of their companions, but continued to kill game and dress their skins, while at night they would sit by their camp-fire, singing their songs and talking of friends at home.

The necessity of procuring several indispensable articles, caused the brothers to part, however, in the spring of 1771; Squire set off for Carolina, in order to obtain horses and the other requisites for transporting their stock of peltry, and Daniel remained alone, to protect the furs and add to their amount. It was while in this solitary state that the courage of the hunter was put to the severest tests. Utter solitude threw him into the full companionship of his own heart and feelings, and as thoughts of an anxious wife and beloved family would rise before him his soul began to yearn for home. To add to the trials which solitude and his affections imposed upon him, he discovered in his peregrinations that the Indians were abroad, and that in his absence they had visited his little cabin; this discovery imposed upon him the utmost caution and circumspection, and when his brother returned with horses, they loaded them with peltry and departed to find a more eligible site for a settlement. After much fatigue and examination, they at last resolved to settle on the Kentucky river, and, having loaded their horses, they set out for their families on the Yadkin, Daniel having been absent fully two years, in order to bring them to their future home.

On the 25th of September, 1773, the brothers and their families moved from Yadkin towards their new locations on the Kentucky; on their way they were joined by five families and forty armed men, which accession of strength added to their courage and hope. This migration, which was conducted in patriarchal fashion, was unfortunate, however, for the young men and cattle, having fallen behind the main body of emigrants, were attacked by Indians at a pass called Cumberland Gap, and six of them were killed, while the cattle were dispersed. This circumstance so disheartened the party that they retired to the settlements on Clinch River, in Virginia, where they in the mean time settled. From Clinch River, Boone often went out as the leader of exploring parties, and the Indians having become troublesome on the Virginian frontier, he obtained the appointment of captain of militia, with the command of three of the frontier forts. He acted in this capacity until 1774, when he, in company with other emigrants, removed his family to the station in which he had

originally intended to settle in Kentucky. Previous to this removal, the sturdy backwoodsman and several companions had erected a wooden fort and stockade, which had been named Boonesborough, and thither Mrs Boone ! and her daughters were conducted, being the first white women who had ever stood upon the banks of the Kentucky. This fort was built in the general form of a parallelogram, and was about two hundred and fifty feet long and one hundred and seventy-five feet broad. Houses of hewn logs projected from each corner, adjoining which were stockades for a short distance, and the remaining space on the four sides, except the gateways, was filled up with cabins erected of rough logs, placed close together, as a defence against the Indians. In 1775, many more pioneers arrived in the new settlement, and planted other stations, and at the same time brought intimation of the commencement of the Revolutionary war. Daniel Boone and his co-settlers continued to fell the forest, hunt the game, and cultivate the soil, while the tide of war rolled over the eastern states; but the settlers did not live in quiet times, though remote from the seat of war. Stirring events were occurring on the frontier as well as in the more thickly peopled colonies. Sometimes the Indians would rush from their concealments upon unwary stragglers from the stations and bear them off as prisoners, and then pursuit and battle were the consequence. Sometimes they would attack the forts with frightful yells and wild menaces, and at other times they would cut off individuals with the tomahawk or rifle, so that it required the most determined courage and energy to maintain a position in this disputed territory, which was in transition from the wilderness to the farm.

Boone was of the most essential service to the rising but harassed stations, from his knowledge of the Indians and his cool, indomitable courage. They were deprived of his services more than once in consequence of capture; but he always contrived to circumvent the Indians and effect his escape.

In several of the states, remote from the Atlantic Ocean, Providence, by a most beneficent and wonderful arrange ment, has placed salt springs, which supply to the wild animals, such as deer and buffalo, this condiment, of which they are very fond; they will come far distances to lick the very soil from which the muriate exudes, and the spots where it is found are therefore called Salt Licks. From digging the spots marked out by the beasts of the field, springs are found, from which the first settlers used to manufacture salt; and it was while superintending a saltmaking party of thirty men, at the Lower Blue Licks, on Licking River, Kentucky, that Captain Boone fell for the second time into the hands of the red-skins. He was scout and hunter for the party, and had been out trying to procure game, when he was discovered by a party of Indians, numbering one hundred and two, and although he made strenuous efforts to escape, he was overtaken and made prisoner. This party was on the route to attack Boonesborough, and the founder of that station felt that all his courage and address were necessary in order to deceive and foil the red men. He professed to be highly pleased with the company of the Indians, and soon succeeded in gaining their confidence and securing favourable terms for the men at the Licks. Boone knew that it would have been madness in him to irritate the Indians in the then condition of Boonesborough, by attempting or encouraging resistance, and his proceeding in this affair, and its issue, showed his wisdom. The Indians rigidly complied with all their stipulations, and treated the people with great kindness after they had quietly yielded; resistance would have provoked their vengeance, and the women and children would have perished by the scalping-knife and tomahawk. Boone and his men were carried to Detroit by the Indians, and the latter were delivered to the British commandant there, but Daniel was taken to the Indian country, where he was well treated, and so highly was he prized by his captors, that they refused tempting offers of ransom for him, preferring to retain him and adopt him into their tribe. Blackfish, a distinguished Shawanese chief, took him to his lodge to supply the place of a de

1

ceased son and great warrior. The hardy backwoodsman reconciled himself, with much apparent cheerfulness, to his new mode of life, but he always meditated escape, although regarded with much love by his adopted father and mother, and looked upon by the Shawanese as a distinguished hunter and brave. He yearned for the home and kindred, however, that were bound to him by ties of blood and fond recollections, and the Indians were not so ignorant of human nature as to believe him totally reconeiled to his prairie life. Whenever he went forth, therefore, his bullets were carefully counted, and he was required to produce a head of game for every ball. He cut his lead into parts, however, sufficient to kill turkeys and such creatures, and by making his charges of powder light is proportion, he contrived to conceal a small stock of these essentials to a hunter in the woods. He had been some time with his new friends, and had acquired a partia! knowledge of their language, when it was proposed to convoke the nation and to march once more against the settlements. This intimation, of which the aborigines beJeved him to be ignorant, startled the hunter, and determined him to escape and alarm the frontier-men; he accordingly rose early on a morning in June, and stealing noiselessly from his lodge and the village, he dashed into the woods. Many weary miles of tangled brake and forest lay between him and his friends and relations; many broad rivers rolled between him and the dwellings of those he loved; yet he was brave and strong, and full of hope, and he sped stoutly and rapidly on. There were Indians on his track, morasses to traverse, rivers to swim, jungle to break through, and food to be procured with the rifle without bringing his foemen upon him; and yet he reached Boonesborough in safety, and gave the alarm to his friends, who were prepared for the Indians when they appeared before its stockade.

After two days' parley, a relief which was adroitly managed by Boone in order to enable assistance to arrive from the other stations, several futile attacks were made upon the fort, when, wearied by discomfiture, the Indians raised the siege and retreated to their villages. This was the last attack that was made by an Indian army upon this fort. They perceived that, despite of their continued attacks, the big-knives continued to increase, and, despairing of driving them from the country, they retired farther into the prairie. During his retention by the Shawanese, the wife of Boone, believing that he had been slain, returned with her family to Yadkin in North Carolina, where her father dwelt, and in the autumn of 1778 she had the pleasure of again seeing her husband.

Undeterred by wars and fightings with the rightful owners of the soil, emigrants continued to pour into the new territory, until, instead of the solitary hunter, Daniel Boone, in all that wide region, there were hundreds of families and many beautiful farms; and then the customs and forms of society began to supersede the free and easy habits of the borders, and lawyers began to examine the title deeds of men to the soil which they had taken from the wilderness and defended against the red man. In 1779, Boone raised about twenty thousand dollars, with which sum he proposed to secure his right to a large tract of land in Kentucky; but when on his way from the backwoods Richmond, in order to meet the Virginian commission fer setting such claims, he was robbed of his all, together with other sums entrusted to him by his friends for a similar purpose with his own. Boone did not, however, lose the confidence of his friends on account of this loss; they થો i every faith in his integrity, and they heartily sympathised with him, although this misfortune reduced them to The necessity of giving up their peremptory claims upon their farms. After this heavy pecuniary loss, Boone, now major of militia, returned with his family from Yadkin Bonesborough, when Kentucky having been divided to three counties, each now capable of raising a regiment of men, he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of Lincoln

eunty.

The history of Kentucky consists simply of a halfagricultural, half-military system of progress and ex

citement, showing the gradual construction of a system of political economy, which, having its origin in antagonism, engenders and perpetuates distrust and force, so long as that system prevails. At some periods the husbandmen had to be attended to their labour by armed men, and the crops had to be gathered in by bands of warriors. They had come to the Indian territory with no title to it save their rifles, and they had maintained the possessions which they had reft from the rightful owners by cruelty and force. At first the white men maintained themselves within their forts and stockades, but whenever their strength permitted, they organised invading bands, and carried fire and havoc into the towns of the red men. Under the command of General Clark, and led on by Boone, who was as famous a scout as Cooper's Hawkeye,' and who might be taken as the archetype of this the finest of the American novelist's portraits, attacks were frequently made upon the native villages, and these expeditions seem to have been conducted upon the exact principle of retaliation. Upon one occasion the Kentuckians entered and took possession of the town of Old Chillicothe, when, their historians inform us, they took seven prisoners and five scalps. Indeed, the white men adopted this disgusting mode of mutilation from the Indians, while they pretended to condemn their cruelty, and they vaunted these bloody trophies as much as did the despised red-skins. In this expedition five towns were sacked and razed, and such was the fury and destructiveness manifested by the Christian invaders, that even the Indians were appalled by them.

The acknowledgment of the independence of the United States by Britain, and the close of hostilities in the east, was also the signal for a cessation of war in the west. It must be remembered, to the disgrace of the British government, that it had incited the Indians to attack the settlers, in order to withdraw them from aiding the revolutionary army, and it had paid to the savage a sum of money for each scalp which he tore from the head of a white man. This blood-premium was withdrawn, however, and the redskin buried the hatchet, leaving the settlers of Kentucky in peace. The large majority of these were from the states of Carolina and Virginia, and were inured to a life of toil and danger, and consequently well fitted to be the settlers of a new colony, the women as well as the men. The duties of the former were as laborious and onerous as those of the latter. They attended to the dairy, spun, wove, and fashioned garments, wrought in the fields, and carried water from the springs. The building of forts and cabins, chopping of trees, and tilling the soil, together with all the active measures of defence, were the appropriate business of the men. Deerskins were extensively used in the manufacture of hunting-shirts, pantaloons, leggins, mocassins, and handkerchiefs; ropes were formed from strips of the same material, and bedcoverings from the dressed skins of the elk and buffalo. Wooden vessels scooped out with the hunter's knife were the table utensils; gourds were used as drinking-cups, blocks of wood as chairs, and tables, and bedsteads, and other articles of furniture were of the same rough and homely description. Food, however, of the most nutritious kind was in the greatest abundance and profusion; venison and fowl were within the reach of every family, and milk and butter were also profusely plentiful. During the Indian alarms but little grain could be raised, but as soon as the storm of war had ceased, the corn began to wave on the broad tracts which had once been forest and prairie, and bread became one of the most abundant aliments in the west.

Daniel Boone applied himself diligently during the breaking-up season to the cultivation of his land, and in the harvest to the gathering in of his crops, but the old inveterate passion for hunting drew him from home every hunting season. Whenever the time approached for him to begin his excursions, he became restless and abstracted, and wandered about, examining the face of the sky, marking the direction of the wind, talking of nothing but hunting during the day, and dreaming of the chase at night. The qualifications of a good hunter are exactly those of a learned practical zoologist. The habits of the creatures

which he chases are perfectly known to him, and they can rarely escape him; by long and patient observation he is also a meteorologist. Understanding the signs in the heavens, and profiting by that knowledge in its application to his calling, a hunter in the most cloudy day can indicate the cardinal points of the compass, if he is in the woods, by observing the barks of trees; and he can discover the wind in the calmest, by simply heating his finger in his mouth, and then holding it above his head, marking which part of it first becomes cold. A hunter's camp is but a rude construction, and offers few inducements to the lover of domestic comfort to quit his home. It is open in front, where the fire is kindled; the back part is generally a large log, or fallen tree; the gables are upright poles, whose interstices are filled up with leaves and moss; the roof slopes back, and is covered with the bark of trees or some clap-boards; and here does the trapper dwell for several months at a time, sleeping on dried leaves or grass, rolled in his blanket, and piling up the skins of wild animals, until the season for returning to the settlements comes back. Some hunters go two in company, some take a boy with them to keep the camp, and some, like Daniel Boone, hunt and dwell alone. During the day the hunter is in the woods, and is wholly intent upon the pursuit of game, knowing no social enjoyment save when he adjourns to the camp to prepare the skins; evening is the time for his mirth and social glee, and it is then, when seated round the camp-fire, that the song and story circulate.

In 1792, Kentucky was admitted one of the states of the federal union; and as a revision of her laws took place at this important juncture, and a particular adjudication on land claims was entered into, Colonel Boone and hundreds of others lost their possessions from defective titles. Disgusted by a long process of litigation, and irritated by the essential injustice of the lawyerly manner of robbing him of his land, he gathered his little property together, and removed to the Kehawna, in Virginia, and settled on that river. He resided here for some time, cultivating his farm, and pursuing his favourite calling during the proper season, until, allured by the tales of hunters, he removed his family, in 1795, to Upper Louisiana, then part of the Spanish possessions in America. He established himself in the Femme Osage settlement, about forty-five miles west of St Louis, and his fame having gone before him to his new habitation, the lieutenantgovernor welcomed him, and assured him that ample portions of land would be given to him and his family. In July 1800, Boone received the commission of commandant of the Femme Osage district from Don Charles de Delassus, and ten thousand larpents of land were also awarded to him. But some fatality seemed to attend this hardy hunter in all his legal transactions. He always neglected to fix himself in his possessions according to the established forms, and when, in the changes of government incident to a rapidly growing and changing state, a revision of titles, &c., took place, he was always found a loser. Louisiana, originally a French settlement, had been transferred by that government to Spain, and Spain again, in 1804, ceded this territory to the United States. It was at this period, when age was beginning to mark its inroads on his strong and hardy frame, that Boone, by a quibble of law, found himself once more a landless man. It is no wonder that he felt indignant at the treatment he thus received, for if ever honest unsophisticated integrity dwelt in the heart of man, that man was Daniel Boone. The losses which he had caused to his friends when on the route from Boonesborough to Richmond he had ever regarded as a debt, and when, by hunting and trapping, he paid off the last farthing of this sum, he declared himself willing and ready to die; for this man, who never trembled nor quailed under the most appalling circumstances of terror or danger, trembled lest it should be said when he died, Boone is a dishonest man.' As an instance of the courage and coolness of this astonishing old man, the following anecdote is told. On one occasion he went to hunt on the Osage river, taking with him a negro boy and pack horses. Soon after, having laid in his winter stock, he was taken ill, and lay for some time in the camp. Upon a fine day, however,

he contrived, with the aid of his staff and his attendant, to crawl to the summit of a little eminence, and mark out the ground for his grave. He instructed the boy, in case that he died, to lay his body straight, to wash it, and wrap it up in a clean blanket, and then, after digging a temporary grave, to drag it to it, and cover it with earth and leaves, until he should go and inform his relatives where to find it. He was most particular in his directions about the distribution of the skins, rifle, and other articles which belonged to him, and manifested all the calmness of an Indian when about to go to the happy hunting grounds when speaking about his decease. He soon recovered, however, and returned home with all the spoils of a winter's campaign in the woods.

In 1809, after another long process at law, Boone was declared by the United States' commissioners to have no right to any land in Louisiana, although for upwards of forty years he had been most actively engaged in exploring, cultivating, and defending both that region and Kentucky. If ever governmental injustice manifested itself, it surely did in this case; if ever legal formality could have gracefully dispensed with her frigid adherence to law, it surely was in the case of Boone. In 1812, the old man, now poor and landless, petitioned the legislature of Kentucky to grant him some portion of the vast territory which he had been the first to explore and reclaim, and, to their honour be it spoken, one thousand larpents of land were granted to the aged pioneer. Boone continued to live with his several children alternately, until the 26th of September, 1820, when, after gradually sinking, he died, aged eighty-six, at the house of his son, Major Nathan Boone. He was buried beside his wife in Missouri, but, after some time, the government of Kentucky built a beautiful mausoleum, in which the remains of Daniel Boone and his wife were finally deposited.

Daniel Boone was five feet ten inches in height, and of athletic form. His face was marked by that gravity which generally characterises the countenances of thoughtful men; his eyes were of a hazel colour, keen, clear, and restless. He was cool, cautious, and cunning in the woods; he was kind, affable, and hospitable at home; but he was a mere child in all that related to the business of society. No other country save America could at the present time present a counterpart to this wonderful son of the forest; but we know, from those who have conversed with them in the wilds of Michigan and Wisconsin, that there are many pioneers on the frontiers of that vast continent whose histories would be almost as wonderful and remarkable as that of Daniel Boone.

BARGAIN S.

WERE the reader to see the beautiful white dashed cottage of Mr Mowbray, with its precisely trimmed little flowerplot, and its fresh-looking green-painted railing, he would in all probability deem him an old bachelor. But if by chance the hall-door was open, and he saw a large white rocking-horse, with sundry small wheelbarrows and carts, adorning the hall, he would no doubt change his opinion, and pronounce him the father of a large family. But in !! both surmises he would find himself mistaken. For, in the first place, Mr Mowbray has been married for the last twenty years; and, in the second, he has no family, either large or small. The reader may with reason ask, 'If he has no family, why all these symptoms of having one?" In reply to this query, we beg him to have a little patience and read on: the story is not a long one,

Mr and Mrs Mowbray are a very happy couple; but there is one thing that they cannot agree upon, which is, the subject of bargains. Mrs Mowbray says, 'That nothing can be really considered a bargain, however cheap it may be, unless it is of use to the purchaser;' her husband contends, upon the other hand, that he is borne out by the old adage, which says that a bargain is a bargain,' and he logically argues, that therefore a bargain must be a bargain, whether it is of use or not.' Mr Mowbray has been attending sales for the last twenty years, and picking