s, and that
their fate is to be added to the thousands of tragedies occurring in
this world which no pen has recorded.

The intrepid Boone and his companion Stewart seemed, however, to have no
idea of abandoning their encampment. But apprehensive that the Indians
might have discovered their retreat, they reared a small hut in another
spot, still more secret and secure. It is difficult to imagine what
motive could have led these two men to remain any longer in these
solitudes, five hundred miles from home, exposed to so many privations
and to such fearful peril. Notwithstanding the utmost care in husbanding
their resources, their powder and lead were rapidly disappearing, and
there was no more to be obtained in the wilderness. But here they
remained a month, doing apparently nothing, but living luxuriously,
according to their ideas of good cheer. The explanation is probably to
be found in the fascination of this life of a hunter, which once
enjoyed, seems almost irresistible, even to those accustomed to all the
appliances of a high civilization.

A gentleman from New York, who spent a winter among the wild scenes of
the Rocky Mountains, describes in the following graphic language, the
effect of these scenes upon his own mind:

"When I turned my horse's head from Pikes Peak, I quite regretted the
abandonment of my mountain life, solitary as it was, and more than once
thought of again taking the trail to the Salado Valley, where I enjoyed
such good sport. Apart from the feeling of loneliness, which anyone in
my situation must naturally have experienced, surrounded by the
stupendous works of nature, which in all their solitary grandeur frowned
upon me, there was something inexpressibly exhilarating in the
sensation of positive freedom from all worldly care, and a consequent
expansion of the sinews, as it were, of mind and body, which made me
feel elastic as a ball of india-rubber, and in such a state of perfect
ease, that no more dread of scalping Indians entered my mind, than if I
had been sitting in Broadway, in one of the windows of the Astor House.

"A citizen of the world, I never found any difficulty in investing my
resting place wherever it might be, with the attributes of a home.
Although liable to the accusation of barbarism, I must confess that the
very happiest moments of my life have been spent in the wilderness of
the Far West. I never recall but with pleasure the remembrance of my
solitary camp in the Bayo