162 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



Virginia and North Carolina — before lie was twenty-three. 

 Having reached eighteen, with rifle on shoulder and hunting- 

 knife at belt, he first set off alone for the wilds of Western 

 Virginia. He left his parents behind — since he had found 

 that they were not to be reconciled to the wild, roving, soli- 

 tary life to which he had been so incurably addicted from the 

 time he was strong enough to handle his little rifle. Since 

 then, the woods had been his home and the father's house 

 his camp — though less and less frequently, as the years ad- 

 vanced, had it amounted even to so much of a tie. 



It was not that the young Daniel was of either an ungentle 

 or unloving nature that this apparent alienation and desertion 

 occurred — ^the reverse is true, and his whole striking career 

 has demonstrated him to have been the possessor of attributes 

 as loyal and as generous as ever marked the man of great 

 achievement. No, the instinct of freedom — freedom with 

 God and nature — was as strong as life in him, and his 

 tenacity of purpose as ungovernable as the law of gravitation. 



His family was humble, and he had no educated purpose 

 but what he had learned from the deep breathings of nature. 

 What this purpose was, he never stopped to think — he only 

 felt yearnings — ungovernably strong — the meaning of which 

 he could not know — but which led him, deeper and deeper, 

 with yet more resistless strength, into the cool profounds of 

 the all-nourishing bosom of his primeval mother. Here was 

 his learning — here he found a language with meanings enough 

 to him — for each day had taught him to read with clearer 

 and more imerring vision. He could not interpret this lan- 

 guage any more than he could the purpose with which his life 

 was filled ; but, as with that purpose, he would feel it in his 

 being. About all that he knew definitely concerning him- 

 self was, that he always had been a hunter, and always should 

 be a hunter ; and, as for what might happen farther, he gave 

 no other thought than for the day or the hour. 



His spirit — even at lusty eighteen — with the eye of a hawk 



