THE GRAVE OF THE SILENT HUNTER. 198 
quered or conqueror could agree to part. Here the game 
lingered too, and still lingers, and must contimue to linger for 
many a year to come; though what was once sole possession 
of the fierce, swarthy Shawanee, is now periodically intruded 
upon by the pale sons of the lordly planters of the tobacco 
lands to the south, who are accustomed to make up, yearly, 
“camping parties” to hunt in this region for a few weeks 
during the fall of the year. 
Along the southern border of the rougher part of this 
wilderness, there are a few cabins of the old race of hunters, 
who belong to the times of Boone, and still boast that they con- 
tinue to “hold their own,” which means, being still “out of 
Sight of the smoke of a neighbor’s chimney!” It would 
indeed be rather a difficult feat to see this same smoke, it 
must be confessed, since the nearest neighbor is probably 
twelve miles off, and both thew huts embosomed in steep 
crags ! 
I have never been a lover of, what they term so expres- 
eively in the West, “a crowd,” particularly on hunting excur- 
sions; the chief charm of which has consisted, in the entire 
separation from my race, permitted for the time, and the 
solitude that invites a refreshing communion with the primi- 
tive forms of the natural world. Many’s the time have I 
forgotten to shoot, and let the stately deer go by unscathed, 
while I stood breathless to admire its graceful action, and 
the charming unity of its antlered presence here, with the 
swaying of old boughs and lapsing leap of streams. With 
such moods upon me, I could not bear to hurt the lovely 
creatures; it seemed as though a voice of our mother nature 
chid me: “Shame! shame! to slay the beautiful !” 
But I was usually as keen a hunter as ever startled the 
ancient echoes with the rifle’s shrilly ring. My boon com- 
panion at this time, some twelve years ago, was like myself, 
named Charles, or Charlie M., as he was everywhere called, 
from his merry, reckless, eh Now Charlie was a 
