"EPISODES" OF WESTERN LIFE 281 



Great Pine Forest of Pennsylvania, three hundred 

 miles beyond the place last mentioned. In all these 

 different parts, it appeared to me not to have exceeded 

 a quarter of a mile in breadth." Audubon was doubt- 

 less mistaken in his hasty inference that marks of forest 

 devastation observed at such widely separated points 

 were due to the same storm, but this would only illus- 

 trate a lack of caution which he sometimes displayed. 



A contemporary writer 10 declared that Audubon's 

 account of "Mason," the outlaw, whose name we are 

 told should be spelled "Meason," was altogether fabu- 

 lous; that he was not killed by a regulator party, nor 

 was his head stuck upon a tree in the way described. 11 

 The same critic further discredited the naturalist's ac- 

 count of Daniel Boone, whom he had characterized as 

 follows: 12 "The stature and general appearance of this 

 wanderer of the western forests approached the gigan- 

 tic. His chest was broad and prominent; his muscular 

 powers displayed themselves in every limb; his coun- 

 tenance gave indication of his great courage, enter- 

 prise, and perseverance." "Boone," said this writer, 

 "was under six feet high, probably not more than five 

 feet, ten inches, and of that round, compact build, which 

 makes little show. Though very active, he had the ap- 

 pearance of being rather slender and did not seem as 

 large as he really was." In the case of the outlaw, 

 Audubon no doubt retold a story that had passed from 

 mouth to mouth, but he later learned to be wary of 

 second-hand information, which in matters of natural 

 history sometimes led him into more serious difficulties. 

 In his description of Boone there was no more apparent 



10 James Hall (Bibl. No. 123), Western Monthly Magazine, vol. ii 

 (1834). 



""The Regulators," Ornithological Biography, vol. i, p. 105. 

 12 "Colonel Boone," ibid., vol. i, p. 503. 



