FORT LEAVENWORTH. 139 



of feelings, that poverty blunts the finer sentiments, 

 and that ignorance produces selfish and narrow preju- 

 dices. I have had opportunities of forming a dif- 

 ferent judgment. The morning I bid adieu to the 

 old shanty the common slab-shed in which I was 

 born, where my mother lived, and where the old man 

 had taught me to handle the axe and rifle I felt 

 like a villain that had no right to live for deserting 

 the old homestead. When I looked up at the fa- 

 miliar little cedar-bird singing his morning song from 

 the top of a spruce that grew against our gable, the 

 tears ran down my cheeks ; but I knew it was for the 

 best, and, with the exception of a parting glance as I 

 commenced to dip beneath the brow of a hill that 

 would soon hide all from sight, I never turned round 

 till many a long mile lay between me and my birth- 

 place. 



' But in those days travelling was not as it is now. 

 It took as many days then as hours now to come 

 from Boston to St. Louis. At times I walked, but 

 often got a lift in a waggon, and what between hunt- 

 ing and doing an odd day's work I reached St. Jo's, 

 then the starting-point of all the fur-traders. From 

 there I got to Fort Leavenworth, and where the 

 town now stands many a deer I have tumbled in his 

 tracks. Here I made the acquaintance of a Yorker, 

 going some fifty miles further on to squat. Feeling 

 kind of lonesome, I joined in, and we both started 

 together. The place we fixed on for our location was 

 half prairie, half timber land, and in a month we had 



