366 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



Late in the evening of the same day we were joined 

 by two gentlemen to whom we owed the success of our 

 hunt: Messrs. Clive and Harley Metcalf, planters from 

 Mississippi, men in the prime of life, thorough woods- 

 men and hunters, skilled marksmen, and utterly fearless 

 horsemen. For a quarter of a century they had hunted 

 bear and deer with horse and hound, and were masters 

 of the art. They brought with them their pack of bear 

 hounds, only one, however, being a thoroughly staunch 

 and seasoned veteran. The pack was under the imme- 

 diate control of a negro hunter, Holt Collier, in his own 

 way as remarkable a character as Ben Lilley. He was a 

 man of sixty and could neither read nor write, but he 

 had all the dignity of an African chief, and for half a 

 century he had been a bear hunter, having killed or as- 

 sisted in killing over three thousand bears. He had been 

 born a slave on the Hinds plantation, his father, an old 

 man when he was born, having been the body servant and 

 cook of " old General Hinds," as he called him, when the 

 latter fought under Jackson at New Orleans. When ten 

 years old Holt had been taken on the horse behind his 

 young master, the Hinds of that day, on a bear hunt, 

 when he killed his first bear. In the Civil War he had 

 not only followed his master to battle as his body servant, 

 but had acted- under him as sharpshooter against the 

 Union soldiers. After the war he continued to stay with 

 his master until the latter died, and had then been adopted 

 by the Metcalfs; and he felt that he had brought them 

 up, and treated them with that mixture of affection and 

 grumbling respect which an old nurse shows toward the 



