The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus eBook

American Anti-Slavery Society
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 3,526 pages of information about The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus.

The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus eBook

American Anti-Slavery Society
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 3,526 pages of information about The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus.
leaping and licking my hands, and rolling on the leaves around me.  I listened awhile in the fear of hearing the voices of men following the dogs, but there was no sound in the forest save the gurgling of the sluggish waters of the creek, and the chirp of black squirrels in the trees.  I took courage and started onward once more, taking the dogs with me.  The bell on the neck of the old dog, I feared might betray me, and, unable to get it off her neck, I twisted some of the long moss of the trees around it, so as to prevent its ringing.  At night I halted once more with the dogs by my side.  Harassed with fear, and tormented with hunger, I laid down and tried to sleep.  But the dogs were uneasy, and would start up and bark at the cries or the footsteps of wild animals, and I was obliged, to use my utmost exertions to keep them quiet, fearing that their barking would draw my pursuers upon me.  I slept but little; and as soon as daylight, started forward again.  The next day towards evening, I reached a great road which, I rejoiced to find, was the same which my master and myself had travelled on our way to Greene county.  I now thought it best to get rid of the dogs, and accordingly started them in pursuit of a deer.  They went off, yelling on the track, and I never saw them again.  I remembered that my master told me, near this place, that we were in the Creek country, and that there were some Indian settlements not far distant.  In the course of the evening I crossed the road, and striking into a path through the woods, soon came to a number of Indian cabins.  I went into one of them and begged for some food.  The Indian women received me with a great deal of kindness, and gave me a good supper of venison, corn bread, and stewed pumpkin.  I remained with them till the evening of the next day, when I started afresh on my journey.  I kept on the road leading to Georgia.  In the latter part of the night I entered into a long low bottom, heavily timbered—­sometimes called Wolf Valley.  It was a dreary and frightful place.  As I walked on, I heard on all sides the howling of the wolves, and the quick patter of their feet on the leaves and sticks, as they ran through the woods.  At daylight I laid down, but had scarcely closed my eyes when I was roused up by the wolves snarling and howling around me.  I started on my feet, and saw several of them running by me.  I did not again close my eyes during the whole day.  In the afternoon, a bear with her two cubs came to a large chestnut tree near where I lay.  She crept up the tree, went out on one of the limbs, and broke off several twigs in trying to shake down the nuts.  They were not ripe enough to fall, and, after several vain attempts to procure some of them, she crawled down the tree again and went off with her young.

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The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.