wie.--Bombardment of the
Fort.--Crockett's Journal.--Sharpshooting.--Fight outside of the
Fort.--Death of the Bee Hunter.--Kate of Nacogdoches.--Assault on the
Citadel.--Crockett a Prisoner.--His Death. . . . 340

DAVID CROCKETT.

CHAPTER I.

Parentage and Childhood.

The Emigrant.--Crossing the Alleghanies.--The boundless
Wilderness.--The Hut on the Holston.--Life's Necessaries.--The
Massacre.--Birth of David Crockett.--Peril of the
Boys.--Anecdote.--Removal to Greenville; to Cove Creek.--Increased
Emigration.--Loss of the Mill.--The Tavern.--Engagement with the
Drover.--Adventures in the Wilderness.--Virtual Captivity.--The
Escape.--The Return.--The Runaway.--New Adventures.

A little more than a hundred years ago, a poor man, by the name of
Crockett, embarked on board an emigrant-ship, in Ireland, for the New
World. He was in the humblest station in life. But very little is known
respecting his uneventful career excepting its tragical close. His
family consisted of a wife and three or four children. Just before he
sailed, or on the Atlantic passage, a son was born, to whom he gave the
name of John. The family probably landed in Philadelphia, and dwelt
somewhere in Pennsylvania, for a year or two, in one of those slab
shanties, with which all are familiar as the abodes of the poorest
class of Irish emigrants.

After a year or two, Crockett, with his little family, crossed the
almost pathless Alleghanies. Father, mother, and children trudged along
through the rugged defiles and over the rocky cliffs, on foot. Probably
a single pack-horse conveyed their few household goods. The hatchet and
the rifle were the only means of obtaining food, shelter, and even
clothing. With the hatchet, in an hour or two, a comfortable camp could
be constructed, which would protect them from wind and rain. The
camp-fire, cheering the darkness of the night, drying their often wet
garments, and warming their chilled limbs with its genial glow, enabled
them to enjoy that almost greatest of earthly luxuries, peaceful sleep.

The rifle supplied them with food. The fattest of turkeys and the most
tender steaks of venison, roasted upon forked sticks, which they held
in their hands over the coals, feasted their voracious appetites. This,
to them, was almost sumptuous food. The skin of the deer, by a rapid
and simple process of tanning, supplied them with moccasons, and
afforded material for the repair of their tattered garmen