THE ALLEGHANIES. 85 



lingers in the region, but the country is mainly restored to 

 its original possessors, the wolves, the bears, and the deer. 



Here in the vicinity once resided a sturdy old hunter and 

 trapper, one Hubbard Starkweather, with Pritchard, his 

 " chum." Starkweather left the country in 1855, and I after- 

 wards accidentally encountered him in the " Big Woods " of 

 "Wisconsin ; he was seventy years old then, and I doubt not 

 is now "gathered to his fathers. " 



Many are the pelts of varmints and saddles of venison he 

 has "packed" out to Coudersport in the dead of winter; 

 many the traps he has set for mink, marten, and otter ; many 

 the panthers he has laid out " cold " in the woods. There 

 were two fresh cat-skins stretched out on the side of his 

 shanty the first time I pushed my way through the under- 

 brush up to his door. Of royal blood was Starkweather, the 

 son of Bernard Starkweather, of Revolutionary fame Mor- 

 gan's crack rifleman, who carried on foot the despatch which 

 resulted in the capture and surrender of Gen. Burgoyne; 

 streaking it through the woods, dodging the British scouts, 

 and making over fifty miles between sundown and sunrise ! 



Pritchard, his chum, was a queer old " coon," whose lips 

 and tongue had long been hermetically and continently 

 closed upon all social intercourse .whatever by a misadven- 

 ture in love. For weeks at a time he never uttered a word. 

 Little was the provocation he gave for quarrel in those days; 

 little the profit old Starkweather derived from his compan- 

 ionship, save the acquisition and compulsory observance of 

 that cardinal virtue, silence. It was the same old story a 

 clear case of heart-break for love. Pretty sweet-heart, when 

 he was young, ran off with another man. Oh, the incon- 

 stancy of woman ! Ah, the devotion of man ! And so the 

 sturdy hunter's congenial springs froze up ! Long it took to 

 dissolve the icy ring around his heart; rigors of weather 

 and hardships of life gradually seamed his features, and his 

 hair grew white with the frosts of winter. At length it hap- 

 pened in this wise : he " took the rheumatics," and had a 



