AUDUBO>' A^■D BOOXE. 165 



and lucrative employment than can well be realized now, for 

 although very many devoted themselves to it as a means of 

 earning an honest livelihood, and the skins and meat of the 

 animals slain by them found an important branch of traffic to 

 the whole country — ^yet everybody was in addition more or 

 less a hunter — so that, fortunately, for our struggles then 

 and since, this might be called the chief occupation of the 

 people, and we a nation of hunters. 



He went in to the nearest trading post now and then, laden 

 with -kins and meat, to exchange them for powder, lead and 

 other necessaries, returning as speedily as possible, for the 

 very atmosphere of even such "crowded haunts," was oppres- 

 sive to him, and the coarse voices of common traffic sounded 

 harsh enough to ears acctistomed only to those of nature. 



His lonely explorations were first directed towards the sum- 

 mits of the great chain. He would make excursions of weeks 

 together along the wildest and most inaccessible sides of the 

 mountains — penetrating their deepest fastnesses, and camping 

 wherever the game or other objects of interest attracted him 

 for a time — ^then he would on again, to some newer and yet 

 more difficult region within reasonable reach of his solitary 

 cabin, and in a difi"erent direction. 



Thus the whole year was unconsciously spent in scaling 

 the Eastern side of those mountains — the descent upon the 

 Western slope of which was to open to him a field of re- 

 nown. 



We next hear of him on the Frontier of North Carolina. 

 Here he lived for over a year in the most entire seclusion — 

 never being seen except when he came in to the nearest 

 settlement for powder and lead ; and here he seemed still more 

 shy than before — ^but yet his unusual energy as a hunter, his 

 skill in wood-craft, and his cool, reckless presence of mind, 

 under all circumstances of danger, soon attracted the admira- 

 tion of the Border men, and, in spite of his modesty and 

 entire shrinking from all intercourse with his fellows that 



