“I’ve heard as much,” returned the bee-hunter, “but should not like to be the ‘human’ to try the experiment That the face of man may have terrors for a beast, I think likely; but hunger would prove more than a match for such fear.  Yonder is our venison, Waring; safe where I left it.”

The carcass of the deer was divided, and each man shouldering his burden, the two returned to the river, taking care to avoid the path that led by the body of the dead Indian.  As both labored with much earnestness, everything was soon ready, and the canoe speedily left the shore.  The Kalamazoo is not in general a swift and turbulent stream, though it has a sufficient current to carry away its waters without any appearance of sluggishness.  Of course, this character is not uniform, reaches occurring in which the placid water is barely seen to move; and others, again, are found, in which something like rapids, and even falls, appear.  But on the whole, and more especially in the part of the stream where it was, the canoe had little to disturb it, as it glided easily down, impelled by a light stroke of the paddle.

The bee-hunter did not abandon his station without regret.  He had chosen a most agreeable site for his chiente, consulting air, shade, water, verdure, and groves, as well as the chances of obtaining honey.  In his regular pursuit he had been unusually fortunate; and the little pile of kegs in the centre of his canoe was certainly a grateful sight to his eyes.  The honey gathered this season, moreover, had proved to be of an unusually delicious flavor, affording the promise of high prices and ready sales.  Still, the bee-hunter left the place with profound regret.  He loved his calling; he loved solitude to a morbid degree, perhaps; and he loved the gentle excitement that naturally attended his “bee-lining,” his discoveries, and his gains.  Of all the pursuits that are more or less dependent on the chances of the hunt and the field, that of the bee-hunter is of the most quiet and placid enjoyment.  He has the stirring motives of uncertainty and doubt, without the disturbing qualities of bustle and fatigue; and, while his exercise is sufficient for health, and for the pleasures of the open air, it is seldom of a nature to weary or unnerve.  Then the study of the little animal that is to be watched, and, if the reader will, plundered, is not without a charm for those who delight in looking into the wonderful arcana of nature.  So great was the interest that le Bourdon sometimes felt in his little companions, that, on three several occasions that very summer, he had spared hives after having found them, because he had ascertained that they were composed of young bees, and had not yet got sufficiently colonized to render a new swarming more than a passing accident.  With all this kindness of feeling toward his victims, Boden had nothing of the transcendental folly that usually accompanies the sentimentalism of the exaggerated, but his feelings and impulses were simple and direct, though so often gentle and humane.  He knew that the bee, like all the other inferior animals of creation, was placed at the disposition of man, and did not scruple to profit by the power thus beneficently bestowed, though he exercised it gently, and with a proper discrimination between its use and its abuse.