AUDUBON AND BOONE. 165 



and lucrative employment than can well be realized now, for 

 although very many devoted themselves to it as a means of 

 earning an honest livelihood, and the skins and meat of the 

 animals slain by them found an important branch of traffic to 

 the whole country — yet everybody was in addition more or 

 less a hunter — so that, fortunately, for our struggles then 

 and since, this might be called the chief occupation of the 

 people, and we a nation of hunters. » 



He went in to the nearest trading post now and then, laden 

 with skins and meat, to exchange them for powder, lead and 

 other necessaries, returning as speedily as possible, for the 

 very atmosphere of even such "crowded haunts," was oppres- 

 sive to him, and the coarse voices of common traffic sounded 

 harsh enough to ears accustomed only to those of nature. 



His lonely explorations were first directed towards the sum- 

 mits of the great chain. He would make excursions of weeks 

 together along the wildest and most inaccessible sides of the 

 mountains — penetrating their deepest fastnesses, and camping 

 wherever the game or other objects of interest attracted him 

 for a time — then he would on again, to some newer and yet 

 more difficult region within reasonable reach of his solitary 

 cabin, and in a different direction. 



Thus the whole year was unconsciously spent in scaling 

 the Eastern side of those mountains — the descent upon the 

 Western slope of which was to open to him a field of re- 

 nown. 



We next hear of him on the Frontier of North Carolina. 

 Here he lived for over a year in the most entire seclusion — 

 never being seen except when he came in to the nearest 

 settlement for powder and lead ; and here he seemed still more 

 shy than before — but yet his unusual energy as a hunter, his 

 skill in wood-craft, and his cool, reckless presence of mind, 

 under all circumstances of danger, soon attracted the admira- 

 tion of the Border men, and, in spite of his modesty and 

 entire shrinking from all intercourse with his fellows that 



