From Washington to Little Rock, the capital of the state, there is a mail-road, with farms at every fifteen or twenty miles; but the captain informed me they were inhabited by the refuse from other states, and that west of the Mississippi (except in Louisiana and Missouri) it was always safer to travel through the wilderness, and camp out.  We accordingly took the back-wood trail, across a hilly and romantic country, entirely mineral, and full of extinct volcanoes.  The quantity of game found in these parts is incredible; every ten minutes we would start a band of some twenty turkeys.  At all times, deer were seen grazing within rifle-shot, and I don’t think that, on our first day’s journey over the hills, we met less than twenty bears.

Independent of his love for the wilderness, and his hatred of bowie-knife men, Captain Finn had another reason for not following the mail-road.  He had business to transact at the celebrated hot springs, and he had to call on his way upon one of his brothers in-law, a son of Boone, and a mighty hunter, who had settled in the very heart of the mountains, and who made it a rule to take a trip every spring to the Rocky Mountains.  The second day, at noon, after a toilsome ascent of a few thousand feet, we arrived at a small clearing on the top of the mountains, where the barking of the dogs and the crowing of the fowls announced the vicinity of a habitation, and, ere many minutes had elapsed, we heard the sharp report of a rifle.

“Young Boone’s own, I declare,” exclaimed Finn; “’twas I that gave him the tool.  I should know its crack amidst a thousand.  Now mark me, chief, Boone never misses; he has killed a deer or a bear; if the first, search for a hole between the fifth and sixth rib; if a bear, look in the eye.  At all events, the young chap is a capital cook, and we arrive in good time.  Did I not-say so?  By all the alligators in the swamps!  Eh, Boone, my boy, how fares it with ye?”

We had by this time arrived at the spot where the buck lay dead, and near the body was standing the gaunt form of a man, about forty years old, dressed in tanned leather, and standing six feet nine in his mocassins.  Though we were within a yard of him, he reloaded his rifle with imperturbable gravity, and it was only when he had finished that job that I could perceive his grim features beaming with a smile.

“Welcome, old boy; welcome, stranger; twice welcome to the hunter’s home.  I knew somebody was coming, because I saw the pigeons were flying up from the valley below; and as dried venison won’t do after a morning trip, why, I took the rifle to kill a beast out of my flock” The hunter grinned at his conceit.  “You see,” he continued, “this place of mine is a genuine spot for a hunter.  Every morning, from my threshold, I can shoot a deer, a bear, or a turkey.  I can’t abide living in a country where an honest man must toil a whole day for a mouthful of meat; it would never do for me.  Down Blackey, down Judith, down dogs.  Old boy, take the scalping-knife and skin the beast under the red oak.”