164 Hills and Lakes. 



in ; but I havn't done it, and I ain't sure that I can do 

 it now. You seem to have a nateral way for tlie 

 woods, that ain't common for the city people." 



"Why," said I, "Tucker, though I live in the 

 city, *and have done so for eight years, yet I was raised 

 in the woods, and brought up in a region almost as 

 wild as your own Shatagee. I remember the time 

 when I could be sure of a deer in half an hour, from 

 the time I left my father's door. I have caught many 

 a one in a lake with a canoe, as we caught that one 

 last night, and have, hundreds of times, listened to the 

 music of my own hounds on the mountains. Bears 

 and panthers I knew nothing about, because they did 

 not frequent that part of the country. I remember 

 when about the Crooked Lake, in old Steuben, was a 

 dense wilderness, as it is about the Lower Shatagee 

 now, and my father's log house and clearing, was the 

 only one for fifteen miles along its shore, — ^when we 

 had to go eight miles for a doctor, and seven miles to 

 a mill. If we wanted to see a neighbor, we had to 

 travel three miles to do it, and my father's house stood 

 at the end of the road. I am younger than you are. 

 Tucker, and when I left that country, eight years ago, 

 it took a pretty tough, long-legged man, to tire me out 



