ever consort with the jaundiced or distempered spirit.  His garb indicated, in part, and was well adapted to the pursuits of the hunter and the labors of the woodman.  We couple these employments together, for, in the wildernesses of North America, the dense forests, and broad prairies, they are utterly inseparable.  In a belt, made of buckskin, which encircled his middle, was stuck, in a sheath of the same material, a small axe, such as, among the Indians, was well known to the early settlers as a deadly implement of war.  The head of this instrument, or that portion of it opposite the blade, and made in weight to correspond with and balance the latter when hurled from the hand, was a pick of solid steel, narrowing down to a point, and calculated, with a like blow, to prove even more fatal, as a weapon in conflict, than the more legitimate member to which it was appended.  A thong of ox-hide, slung over his shoulder, supported easily a light rifle of the choicest bore; for there are few matters indeed upon which the wayfarer in the southern wilds exercises a nicer and more discriminating taste than in the selection of a companion, in a pursuit like his, of the very last importance; and which, in time, he learns to love with a passion almost comparable to his love of woman.  The dress of the woodman was composed of a coarse gray stuff, of a make sufficiently outre, but which, fitting him snugly, served to set off his robust and well-made person to the utmost advantage.  A fox-skin cap, of domestic manufacture, the tail of which, studiously preserved, obviated any necessity for a foreign tassel, rested slightly upon his head, giving a unique finish to his appearance, which a fashionable hat would never have supplied.  Such was the personage, who, so fortunately for Ralph, plied his craft in that lonely region; and who, stumbling upon his insensible form at nightfall, as already narrated, carefully conveyed him to his own lodgings at the village-inn of Chestatee.

The village, or town—­for such it was in the acceptation of the time and country—­may well deserve some little description; not for its intrinsic importance, but because it will be found to resemble some ten out of every dozen of the country towns in all the corresponding region.  It consisted of thirty or forty dwellings, chiefly of logs; not, however, so immediately in the vicinity of one another as to give any very decided air of regularity and order to their appearance.  As usual, in all the interior settlements of the South and West, wherever an eligible situation presented itself, the squatter laid the foundation-logs of his dwelling, and proceeded to its erection.  No public squares, and streets laid out by line and rule, marked conventional progress in an orderly and methodical society; but, regarding individual convenience as the only object in arrangements of this nature, they took little note of any other, and to them less important matters.  They built where the land