soon beyond the reach of the most distant view of their homes. This day
and night, and the succeeding one, the scenes in view were familiar; but
in the course of the four or five that followed, all vestiges of
civilized habitancy had disappeared. The route lay through a solitary
and trackless wilderness. Before them rose a line of mountains, shooting
up against the blue of the horizon, in peaks and elevations of all
forms. The slender store of food with which they had set out, was soon
exhausted. To obtain a fresh supply was the first and most pressing
want. Accordingly, a convenient place was selected, and a camp
constructed of logs and branches of trees, to keep out the dew and rain.
The whole party joined in this preliminary arrangement. When it was so
far completed, as to enable a part to finish it before night-fall, part
of the company took their rifles and went in different directions in
pursuit of game. They returned in time for supper, with a couple of deer
and some wild turkeys. Those, whose business it was to finish the camp,
had made a generous fire and acquired keen appetites for the coming
feast. The deer were rapidly dressed, so far at least as to furnish a
supper of venison. It had not been long finished, and the arrangements
for the night made, before the clouds, which had been gathering
blackness for some hours, rolled up in immense folds from the point,
whence was heard the sudden burst of a furious wind. The lightning
darted from all quarters of the heavens. At one moment every object
stood forth in a glare of dazzling light. The next the darkness might
almost be felt. The rain fell in torrents, in one apparently unbroken
sheet from the sky to the earth. The peals of thunder rolled almost
unheard amid this deafening rush of waters. The camp of the travellers,
erected with reference to the probability of such an occurrence, was
placed under the shelter of a huge tree, whose branches ran out
laterally, and were of a thickness of foliage to be almost impervious to
the rain. To this happy precaution of the woodsmen, they owed their
escape from the drenching of the shower. They were not, perhaps, aware
of the greater danger from lightning, to which their position had
exposed them.

As was the universal custom in cases like theirs, a watch was kept by
two, while the others slept. The watches were relieved several times
during the night. About midnight, Boone and Holden being upon the watch,
the deep stillne