164 HILLS AND LAKES. 



in ; but I havn't done it, and I ain't sure that I can do 

 it now. You seem to have a nateral way for the 

 woods, that ain't common for the city people." 



" Why/' said I, Tucker, though I live in the 

 city, and have done so for eight years, yet I was raised 

 in the woods, and brought up in a region almost as 

 wild as your own Shatagee. I remember the time 

 when I could be sure of a deer in half an hour, from 

 the time I left my father's door. I have caught many 

 a one in a lake with a canoe, as we caught that one 

 last night, and have, hundreds of times, listened to the 

 music of my own hounds on the mountains. Bears 

 and panthers I knew nothing about, because they did 

 not frequent that part of the country. I remember 

 when about the Crooked Lake, in old Steuben, was a 

 dense wilderness, as it is about the Lower Shatagee 

 now, and my father's log house and clearing, was the 

 only one for fifteen miles along its shore, when we 

 had to go eight miles for a doctor, and seven miles to 

 a mill. If we wanted to see a neighbor, we had to 

 travel three miles to do it, and my father's house stood 

 at the end of the road. I am younger than you are, 

 Tucker, and when I left that country, eight years ago, 

 it took a pretty tough, long-legged man, to tire me out 



