84 Transactions Tennessee Academy of Science. 



finally sold for $2,000.00. This excited the people and was the 

 begining of the pearling industry on the Cumberland and Caney 

 Fork Rivers, which afterwards brought many hundreds of thou- 

 sands of dollars into that section. 



The next is the most interesting rock shelter it has ever been 

 my good fortune to discover. It faces almost due south and is 

 sheltered by adjoining bluffs, to a considerable extent, from east 

 and west winds. South winds are the only ones reaching it. 

 South winds are usually warm. I have no doubt that this shelter 

 has been inhabited during all the time savage man has lived in 

 this section. An old trapper friend kept telling me of a place 

 where Indians had lived. He continued promising to disclose its 

 hiding place, but always had some excuse for delay. Finally the 

 real reason cropped out. I was so anxious to see it that my old 

 trapper felt certain the Indians must have buried silver there. 

 Somehow it is always silver that the ignorant believe is buried 

 with the Indians. This is almost an universal belief in this sec- 

 tion that the Indians left great hordes of buried silver. When I 

 learned the real trouble I told him that, if he would show me the 

 place, I would pay him to help me dig and would also give him 

 all the gold and silver we found. That I was only after the dead 

 men's bones and the little trinkets buried with them, and the in- 

 formation to be gained therefrom. He thought I was half crazy, 

 hut showed me the burial place. 



My walks and talks with this old trapper friend were full of 

 interest and instruction. It was many long years before Ernest 

 Thompson Seton. To my old trapper the soft earth or the dust 

 of a path or the ashes of this rock shelter was the plain printed 

 page of the every day life of the wild things. He it was that 

 knew of the last otter slide the banks of the Cumberland were 

 to ever see. He would stop me and show where the coon had 

 passed and tell his ])robable errand. Here the play of the mice 

 in the ashes. There the skunk had dug for worms. I remember 

 his calling my attention to some small dc]iressions in the soil, 

 saying, "J will set my tra])s here and catch this old pole cat. lie 

 was here last night and comes here regularly to dig for worms." 



My old trapper was the wildest and the wisest old animal in all 

 those glorious woods. 



