62 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



him ; friends by hundreds, who would every one of them 

 have gone his security for a million, yet could not have 

 loaned him a hundred dollars in a month. He lived in a 

 low, badly-built, wind-cracked, fenceless, vineless, paint- 

 less mansion in the Pine Lands, yet the proudest chief 

 of all the McGregors could not have equalled the cour- 

 teous pride of manner with which he welcomed the 

 stranger to his home, and made him his friend. I^o mat- 

 ter for the rickety table ; he scorned to mend it, and no 

 one saw its defects, it was so gracefully presided over. 

 He never alluded to the food he asked you to eat, and 

 you never saAV it was only pork, sweet potatoes, and 

 corn bread. He was bountiful with the choicest wine, 

 lavish of command, and never by any possibility did any 

 labor that could be either deferred or avoided. Yet, for 

 all that, he was an ardent hunter. Strange to say, all 

 lazy people love to fish or hunt, and Macpherson Andrew 

 Jackson loved the latter. Nor bush, nor savannah, nor 

 river, nor heat, nor ram deterred him. He would ride 

 where mortal man could ride, just for the fun of the 

 hunt. So we camped by the side of his house, in com- 

 pliance with an invitation from the proprietor, to spend 

 a few days with him in pursuit of the chase. 



Jackson's palace was of one story and two wings, and 

 the whole building was raised from the ground about 

 three feet by means of wooden posts, which left a pleasant 

 abiding-place beneath for whole broods of young negroes 

 that constantly lay in this novel kennel, looking out like 

 }-oung puppies. The cyperus grass grew sparsely in the 



