212 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
it meant to let us off, on the score of our being green-horas, 
“who didn’t know no better!” 
“But fur a hunter, who ought’er know’d sumthin, to do 
sich a thing—it would’er been more ’an his life or his sleep 
o’nights war worth!’ 
Without pretending to dispute the metaphysical views of 
Jabe, we proceeded as usual to avail ourselves of* his really 
uncommon skill as a guide and driver, while I made it a point 
when we returned from the day’s hunt, and when the evening 
meal had given way to pipes and segars, to bring old Uncle 
Jake round, by indirections, to the topic of which he was 
most shy, while I was most eager, namely, the story of this 
Bill Smith—for the more I heard of him the more curious 
the contradictions of his character appeared. 
In furnishing this relation in my own language, I wish it 
expressly understood, that the whole is necessarily a sort of 
scraps and patch narrative, the general tone of which I take 
from Uncle Jake, but many of the important facts beside have 
been obtained in conversation with some others of the elderly 
survivors of that period, and who, too, had been associates 
of Smith. Other circumstances of interest I picked up in 
Washington City, and others more private, I gleaned in 
North Carolina. I have taken the liberty to throw all these 
things together, as to me ‘“seemeth best,’ and as I have to 
trust entirely to my memory, am liable to some inaccuracies ; 
but such as it is, I offer you this account of Old Bill Smith. 
So far as I can make out the story, he seems to have been 
an orphan boy, thrown upon the charities of the kind world 
when quite young, by the sudden death of parents, whose only 
child he was, and who had lately come over with a ship load 
of other emigrants from Old England. 
It was not to be expected that a child with such an unfortu- 
nate patronymic as Smith, was ever to be inquired after. 
He was lost in the undistinguishable and innumerable multi- 
tude of that great family. Of course the fate of the poor 
