IN THE LOUISIANA CANEBRAKES 365 



The morning after we reached camp we were joined 

 by Ben Lilley, the hunter, a spare, full-bearded man, with 

 wild, gentle, blue eyes and a frame of steel and whipcord. 

 I never met any other man so indifferent to fatigue and 

 hardship. He equalled Cooper's Deerslayer in wood- 

 craft, in hardihood, in simplicity and also in loquacity. 

 The morning he joined us in camp, he had come on foot 

 through the thick woods, followed by his two dogs, and 

 had neither eaten nor drunk for twenty- four hours; for 

 he did not like to drink the swamp water. It had rained 

 hard throughout the night and he had no shelter, no 

 rubber coat, nothing but the clothes he was wearing, and 

 the ground was too wet for him to lie on ; so he perched 

 in a crooked tree in the beating rain, much as if he had 

 been a wild turkey. But he was not in the least tired 

 when he struck camp ; and, though he slept an hour after 

 breakfast, it was chiefly because he had nothing else to 

 do, inasmuch as it was Sunday, on which day he never 

 hunted nor labored. He could run through the woods 

 like a buck, was far more enduring, and quite as indif- 

 ferent to weather, though he was over fifty years old. 

 He had trapped and hunted throughout almost all the 

 half century of his life, and on trail of game he was as 

 sure as his own hounds. His observations on wild crea- 

 tures were singularly close and accurate. He was par- 

 ticularly fond of the chase of the bear, which he followed 

 by himself, with one or two dogs; often he would be 

 on the trail of his quarry for days at a time, lying down 

 to sleep wherever night overtook him, and he had killed 

 over a hundred and twenty bears. 



