strangers, and with maddening despair, they grasped their falling power, and daily grew more desperate as they became more endangered.  I among the rest had now a view of this exuberant west, this great valley of the Hesperides; and I determined to assist in extirpating the red man, and to usurp the land of his fathers.  Among the men who were at the village, I found one who for magnanimity and undaunted courage merits a wreath which should hang high in the temple of fame, and yet, like hundreds of others, he has passed away unhonored, unsung.  His name was Ralph Watts, a sturdy Virginian, with a heart surpassing all which has been said of Virginia’s sons, in those qualities which ennoble the man; and possessing a courage indomitable, and a frame calculated in every way to fulfil whatever his daring spirit suggested.  Such was Ralph Watts.  I had only been in the town a few days, when Ralph and I contracted an intimacy which ended only with his death.  I was passing the small inn of the town, when a tall man, with a hunting shirt and leggings on, stepped out and, laying his hand on my shoulder, said:  ’Stranger, they say you have just come among us, and that you are poor; come along.  I have got just five dollars, no man shall ever say that Ralph Watts passed a moneyless man without sharing with him the contents of his pocket—­come along.’  Ralph and I soon became inseparable friends.  His joys as well as his sorrows were mine; in a word, we shared each other’s sympathies; and this leads me to the scene of the log cabin.  We often hunted together, and while on our last expedition, took an oath of friendship which should end only with death—­and how soon was it to end!  We left the infant Cincinnati one summer morning at the rising of the sun, and with our guns on our shoulders, and our pouches well supplied with ammunition, we struck into the deep wilderness, trusting to our own stout hearts and woodscraft for our food and safety.  We journeyed merrily along, whiling away the hours in recounting to each other those trivial incidents of our lives which might be interesting, or in singing snatches of song, and listening to its solemn echo as it reverberated among the tall trees of the forest.  Towards evening we reached our first camping ground—­a spot near where the town of Sharon now stands.  Here we pitched our tent, built our fire, cooked our suppers, and prepared to pass away the evening as comfortably as two hunters possibly could.  All at once the deep stillness which reigned around us was broken by a low cry similar to that of a panther.  We both ceased speaking and listened attentively, when the cry was repeated still nearer, as if the arrival was rapidly advancing upon us; and thus the cry was repeated, again and again, till its shrillness seemed not more than a hundred yards distant, when the voice changed to that of a yell, whose tones were so familiar to the ear of my companion as to exert quite a visible effect upon his actions.  We both sprang to our