LIFE OF WILSON. 



in all directions; so that for immediate preservation I was oblig- 

 ed to steer out into the river, which rolled and foamed like a 

 sea, and filled my boat nearly half full of water; and it was with 

 the greatest difficulty I could make the least headway. It con- 

 tinued to snow violently until dusk, when I at length made good 

 my landing at a place on the Kentucky shore, where I had per- 

 ceived a cabin; and here I spent the evening in learning the art 

 and mystery of bear-treeing, wolf-trapping, and wild-cat hunt- 

 ing, from an old professor. But notwithstanding the skill of this 

 great master, the country here is swarming with wolves and wild- 

 cats, black and brown; according to this hunter's own confes- 

 sion he had lost sixty pigs since Christmas last; and all night 

 long the distant howling of the wolves kept the dogs in a per- 

 petual uproar of barking. This man was one of those people 

 called squatters, who neither pay rent nor own land, but keep 

 roving on the frontiers, advancing as the tide of civilized po- 

 pulation approaches. They are the immediate successors of 

 the savages, and far below them in good sense and good man- 

 ners, as well as comfortable accommodations. An engraved 

 representation of one of their cabins would form a striking em- 

 bellishment to the pages of the Port Folio, as a specimen of 

 the first order of American Architecture. 



" Nothing adds more to the savage grandeur, and picturesque 

 effect, of the scenery along the Ohio, than these miserable huts 

 of human beings, lurking at the bottom of a gigantic growth of 

 timber, that I have not seen equalled in any other part of the 

 United States. And it is truly amusing to observe how dear 

 and how familiar habit has rendered those privations, which 

 must have been first the offspring of necessity. Yet none pride 

 themselves more on their possessions. The inhabitants of 

 these forlorn sheds will talk to you with pride of the richness 

 of their soil, of the excellence and abundance of their country, 

 of the healthiness of their climate, and the purity of their wa- 

 ters; while the only bread you find among them is of Indian 

 corn, coarsely ground in a horse-mill, with half of the grains 

 unbroken; even their cattle are destitute of stables and hay, 



