forest or the sunshine of the prairie, I can remember none queerer than
Zebulon Stump, or old Zeb, as he was familiarly known. "Kaintuck by
birth and raisin'," as he described himself, he was a hunter of the
Daniel Boone sort. The chase was his sole calling; and he would have
indignantly scouted the suggestion that he ever followed it for mere
amusement. Though not of ungenial disposition, he held all amateur
hunters in lordly contempt; and his conversation with such was always of
a condescending character, although he was not, after all, averse to
their company. Being myself privileged with his acquaintance, many of my
hunting excursions were made in company with Old Zeb. He was in truth my
guide and instructor, as well as companion, and initiated me into many
mysteries of American woodcraft.

One of the most inexplicable of these mysteries was Old Zeb's own
existence; and I had known him for a considerable time before I could
unravel it. He stood six feet high in his boots of alligator-skin, into
the ample tops of which were crowded the legs of his coarse "copperas"
trousers; while his other garments were a deer-skin shirt, and a blanket
coat that had once been green, but, like the leaves of the autumnal
forest, had become sere and yellow. A slouched felt hat shaded his
cheeks from the sun upon the rare occasions when Old Zeb strayed beyond
the shadow of the "timber." Where and how he lived were the two points
that most required explanation. In the tract of virgin forest where I
usually met him, there was neither house nor hut. So said the people of
Grand Gulf, the small town upon the Mississippi where I was staying. Yet
Old Zeb had told me that in this forest was his "hum." It was only after
our acquaintance had ripened into strong fellowship, that I had the
pleasure of spending an hour under his humble roof. It consisted of the
hollow trunk of a gigantic sycamore-tree, still standing and growing!
Here Old Zeb found shelter for himself, his squaw,--as he termed Mrs.
Stump,--his household goods, and the tough old nag that carried him in
his wanderings. His establishment was no longer a puzzle,--though there
was still the mystery of how he maintained it. A skilled hunter might
easily procure food for himself and family; but even the hunter disdains
a diet exclusively game. There were the coffee, the "pone" of
corn-bread, the corn itself necessary for the "critter," the gown that
wrapped the somewhat angular outlines o