ALEXANDER WILSON. 
lxxv 
I at length made good my landing, at a place on the Kentucky 
shore, where I had perceived a cabin ; and here I spent the 
evening in learning the art and mystery of bear-treeing, wolf- 
trapping, and wild-cat-hunting, from an old professor. But, not- 
withstanding the skill of this great master, the country here is 
swarming with wolves and wild cats, black and brown : according 
to this hunter’s own confession, he had lost sixty pigs from 
Christmas last, and all night long the distant howling of the wolves 
kept the dogs in a perpetual uproar of barking. This man was 
one of those people called squatters , who neither pay rent nor own 
land, but keep roving on the frontiers, advancing as the tide of 
civilized population approaches. They are the immediate suc- 
cessors of the savages, and far below them in good sense and good 
manners, as well as comfortable accommodations. 
“ Nothing adds more to the savage grandeur and picturesque 
effect of the scenery along the Ohio, than these miserable huts of 
human beings, lurking at the bottom of a gigantic growth of timber, 
that I have not seen equalled in any other part of the United 
States. And it is truly amusing to observe how dear and how 
familiar habit has rendered these privations, which must have been 
first the offspring of necessity ; yet none pride themselves more 
on their possessions. The inhabitants of those forlorn sheds will 
talk to you with pride of the richness of their soil — of the excel- 
lence and abundance of their country — of the healthiness of their 
climate, and the purity of their waters ; while the only bread you 
find among them is of Indian corn, coarsely ground in a horse mill, 
with half of the grains unbroken ; even their cattle are destitute of 
stables and hay, and look like moving skeletons ; their own houses 
worse than pig-styes ; their clothes an assemblage of rags ; their 
faces yellow and lank with disease, and their persons covered with 
filth, and frequently garnished with humours of the Scotch fiddle, 
from which dreadful disease, by the mercy of God, I have been 
most miraculously preserved. All this is the effect of laziness. 
The corn is thrown into the ground in the spring, and the pigs 
turned into the woods, where they multiply like rabbits. The 
labour of the squatter is now over till autumn, and he spends the 
winter in eating pork, cabbages, and hoe-cakes. What a contrast 
to the neat farm, and snug cleanly habitation, of the industrious 
