PREFACE 



Some of the Sketches contained in this volume were con- 

 tributed by the Author to the journal The Spirit of the Times ; 

 some have since been floating about in other papers; while 

 others were also published in New York in 1860, under the title 

 of " Wild Sports in the South." So much it seems necessary to 

 say, lest the reader should regard these " twice-told tales " as lack- 

 ing in originality. 



Nothing more is claimed for this volume than that it contains 

 reminiscences of an actual hunt, and some adventures in the penin- 

 sula of Florida that happened many years ago, and counterparts of 

 tales, some of them then told and since remembered, some of them 

 fancied, such as frontier hunters tell when assembled at night 

 around their camp-fires. 



The Author does not ask that each story shall be regarded as 

 having occurred literally as written ; but he believes the spirit of 

 the tales, the portraits of the frontier characters, the description of 

 natural scenery, and the fragments of Indian history, to be correct. 

 Much of the Indian history may be found in The Exiles of Florida, 

 a historical work written by Joshua E. Gidding, and published in 

 1858. The basis of the Florida Pocahontas is recorded in the 

 history of Garcilasso de la Vega, one of the early Spanish 

 chroniclers. 



The Author has carefully striven not to offend the keen observa- 

 tion and long experience of his hunting comrades at the South, 

 whose eyes will scrutinise these pages, by any allusion to natural 

 history which is not exactly true. As years go by nature and out- 

 of-door life seem more and more attractive, and even the memory 



