154 



AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



perhaps an Indian burning the forest for game, or a 

 solitary hunter or trapper, or an emigrant who had 

 camped for the night. Rarely a deer lick may yet be 

 found in the pastures, and the cattle resort thither in 

 springtime to get, as best they can, the last lingering 

 vestiges of the original salty flavor. Old flint arrow- 

 heads, too, concealed beneath the matted leaves, but 

 found occasionally on the slopes, tell the tale of the 

 red man, while along the brooks, amongst the limestone 

 shelving ledges, brachiopods and the various shells 

 speak to us of a still more distant past. 



There used to be a big hollow tree, so runs tra- 

 dition, somewhere in the woods in this region of the 

 Great Miami, in which wild turkeys held carnival and 

 had their nests; and the pioneer would follow the sound 

 of their calling, and perhaps find his concealment In 

 the tree, and with his pipestem whistle the game back 

 to him. There is an old story, too, still extant, that an 

 Indian used to hide in this tree and imitate the notes 

 of the bird, by this allurement decoying settlers some- 

 times to their death; but that the savage himself met a 

 bullet in his ambush from some pioneer rifleman hid 

 in the brush, and, leaping out from his concealment, 

 fell dead to the ground below. 



It was not so far away, in another woods, that a 

 farmer, while cutting his fuel, found a number of bul- 

 lets imbedded in a mass in the very center of a limb, 

 having been shot there, as he supposed, at a knot or a 

 squirrel, and then covered over by the new growth of 

 the later years. Doubtless pounds of lead might be 

 found in the branches and trunks of the trees here- 

 abouts, could we but dig it out, sent there by generation 

 after generation of hunters. 



