Viii INTRODUCTION. 



Beai- Hunter's penmanship would have a value that should preservt 

 it in some public museum. *' The short and simple annals of the 

 poor" were never better told, nor the diflSculties and dangers which 

 beset them in struggling into civilization in the midst of a wilderness, 

 were never more graphisally portrayed than in this black-letter 

 manuscript. 



If the public could make the acquaintance of Mr. Browning, as 

 we did, in the midst of the mountain region in which he has lived 

 from youth to age, it would add such a charm to his memoir, that I 

 am sure it would be universally read. Found in the midst of a com- 

 munity which had risen around him in the course of three-quarters 

 of a century, he was still the prominent figure among a host of 

 etrong-minded, stalwart mountaineers, among whom his own progeny, 

 numbering more than an hundred intelligent, athletic men, and 

 beautiful women, were conspicuous. In this region, so prolific of 

 strong-minded and able bodied men, old Mr. Browning, the son of 

 the subaltern English soldier who escaped from Braddock's battle, 

 and nestled in the neighborhood below the Alleganies, still holds pre- 

 eminence, and yet he seems insensible of it. 



He is the hero of every man's conversation in his mountain repub- 

 lic, but never of his own ; and although he embodies in his own life- 

 time all its history, he makes a modest cital of himself in connection 

 with it. Like old Nestor among the younger Greek chiefs, who all 

 are willing to defer to his experience, wisdom, and eloquence, he 

 chooses to defer to them in importance; and is, even in "narrative 

 old age," the most striking instance of modest courtesy in waiving 

 its privileges I have ever known. His own adventures as a hunter 

 are often called out from him in social circles to renew the interest 

 of early savage scenes which civilized life is now rendering tame ; 

 and no one has a happier vein in talk to give a living image to the 

 •ye. 



It is the enjoyment derived by his neighbors from this faculty, and 

 the knowledge of his probity and truth, that induced them to urge 

 the attempt of perpetuating the story of his life in print. If it had 

 been taken from his lips by a practised writer, his memoir might 

 have had much greater attraction than as now given by his untaught 

 laboring pen, which arrests the happy flow of recital ; but even as 

 it is, the public will find the impress of genius, of truth, of good 



