162 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
Virginia and North Carolina—before he 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 unerring 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 
