profitable articles in circulating libraries, must more and more reduce their value, as readers grow wiser in their expenditure of time.

BACKWOODS' LITERATURE.

IRVING'S STORY OF RALPH

RINGWOOD-HALL-BIRD-HOFFMAN

SIMMS-THORPE-HOOPER-NEVILLE-HERBERT-HAWES.

Cooper in his Pioneers gave the first examples of backwoods' romance, in his sketches of the manners of a rising settlement. The scenes of turkey-shooting at Christmas, fish-spearing by moonlight on Otsego Lake, the burning of the woods, and other incidents and features of a life that has passed away within the last eighty years, might have reminded American writers that, while in some respects their country was poor in the materials of national prose-fiction, it contained elements which, if treated with good taste and artistic skill, might have partly supplied the want of old traditions. The tale of the first fifty years of Ohio might have made a good romance; but it has passed away, leaving only scattered memorials of early exploits. Writers who have endeavoured to follow in the track left by The Pioneers, have too often trusted in the freshness and natural interest of their materials, and have forgotten that forest scenes and adventures require taste and skill to secure for them a permanent place in national literature. It must be regretted that Irving never found in the stories of the old backwoodsmen the charm that has attracted him so often to the Dutch colonists of New Amsterdam. His sketch of Ralph Ringwood is the best of its kind. We quote the part which describes forest-life in Kentucky about the close of the last century.

'In the course of my first day's trudge, I shot a wild-turkey, and slung it on my back for provisions. The forest was open, and clear from underwood. I saw deer in abundance, but always running, running! It seemed to me as if these animals never stood still.

As night drew near, I prepared for camping. My first care was to

1 Ralph Ringwood, though a fictitious name, is a real personage-the late Governor Duval of Florida. I have given some anecdotes of his early and eccentric career in, as nearly as I can recollect, the very words in which he related them. They certainly afford strong temptations to the embellishments of fiction; but I thought them so strikingly characteristic of the individual, and of the scenes and society into which his peculiar humours carried him, that I preferred giving them in their original simplicity.'-IRVING.

they were cut up and perplexed by paths leading in all directions. Some of these were made by the cattle of the settlers, and were called "stock-tracks;" but others had been made by the immense droves of buffaloes which roamed about the country, from the Flood until recent times. These were called "buffalo-tracks," and traversed Kentucky from end to end like highways. Traces of them may still be seen in uncultivated parts, or deeply worn in the rocks where they crossed the mountains. I was a young woodsman, and sorely puzzled to distinguish one kind of track from the other, or to make out my course through this tangled labyrinth. While thus perplexed, I heard a distant roaring and rushing sound; a gloom stole over the forest: on looking up, when I could catch a stray glimpse of the sky, I beheld the clouds rolled up like balls, the lower part as black as ink. There was now and then an explosion, like a burst of cannonry afar off, and the crash of a falling tree. I had heard of hurricanes in the woods, and surmised that one was at hand. It soon came crashing its way; the forest writhing, and twisting, and groaning before it. The hurricane did not extend far on either side, but in a manner ploughed a furrow through the woodland; snapping off or uprooting trees that had stood for centuries, and filling the air with whirling branches. I was directly in its course, and took my stand behind an immense poplar, six feet in diameter. It bore for a time the full fury of the blast, but at length began to yield. Seeing it falling, I scrambled nimbly round the trunk like a squirrel. Down it went, bearing down another tree with it. I crept under the trunk as a shelter, and was protected from other trees which fell around me, but was sore all over, from the twigs and branches driven against me by the blast.

This was the only incident of consequence that occurred on my way to John Miller's, where I arrived on the following day, and was received by the veteran with the rough kindness of a backwoodsman. He was a gray-haired man, hardy and weather-beaten, with a blue wart, like a great bead, over one eye, whence he was nicknamed by the hunters Blue-bead Miller. He had been in these parts from the earliest settlements, and had signalised himself in the hard conflicts with the Indians, which gained Kentucky the appellation of The Bloody Ground. In one of these fights, he had an arm broken; in another, he had narrowly escaped, when hotly pursued, by jumping from a precipice thirty feet high into a river.

Miller willingly received me into his house as an inmate, and seemed pleased with the idea of making a hunter of me. His dwelling was a small log-house, with a loft or garret of boards, so that there was ample room for both of us. Under his instruction, I soon made a tolerable proficiency in hunting. My first exploit of any consequence was killing a bear. I was hunting in company with two brothers, when we came upon the track of Bruin, in a wood where there was an undergrowth of canes and grape-pines.

He was scrambling up a tree, when I shot him through the breast: he fell to the ground, and lay motionless. The brothers sent in their dog, which seized the bear by the throat. Bruin raised one arm, and gave the dog a hug that crushed his ribs. One yell, and all was over. I don't know which was first dead, the dog or the bear. The two brothers sat down and cried like children over their unfortunate dog. Yet they were mere rough huntsmen, almost as wild and untamable as Indians; but they were fine fellows.

By degrees I became known, and somewhat of a favourite among the hunters of the neighbourhood; that is to say, men who lived within a circle of thirty or forty miles, and came occasionally to see John Miller, who was a patriarch among them. They lived widely apart, in log-huts and wigwams, almost with the simplicity of Indians, and well-nigh as destitute of the comforts and inventions of civilised life. They seldom saw each other; weeks, and even months would elapse without their visiting. When they did meet, it was very much after the manner of Indians; loitering about all day, without having much to say, but becoming communicative as evening advanced, and sitting up half the night before the fire, telling hunting-stories and terrible tales of the fights of the Bloody Ground.

Sometimes several would join in a distant hunting-expedition, or rather campaign. Expeditions of this kind lasted from November until April, during which we laid up our stock of summer provisions. We shifted our hunting-camps from place to place, according as we found the game. They were generally pitched near a run of water, and close by a canebrake, to screen us from the wind. One side of our lodge was open towards the fire. Our horses were hoppled, and turned loose in the canebrakes, with bells round their necks. One of the party stayed at home to watch the camp, prepare the meals, and keep off the wolves; the others hunted. When a hunter killed a deer at a distance from the camp, he would open it and take out the entrails; then climbing a sapling, he would bend it down, tie the deer to the top, and let it spring up again so as to suspend the carcass out of reach of the wolves. At night, he would return to the camp, and give an account of his luck. The next morning early he would get a horse out of the canebrake, and bring home his game. That day he would stay at home to cut up the carcass, while the others hunted.

Our days were thus spent in silent and lonely occupations. It was only at night that we would gather together before the fire, and be sociable. I was a novice, and used to listen with open eyes and ears to the strange and wild stories told by the old hunters, and believed everything I heard. Some of their stories bordered upon the supernatural. They believed that their rifles might be spellbound, so as not to be able to kill a buffalo, even at arm's length. This superstition they had derived from the Indians, who often think the white hunters have laid a spell upon their rifles. Miller partook of this superstition, and used to tell of his rifle's having a

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spell upon it; but it often seemed to me to be a shuffling way of accounting for a bad shot. If a hunter grossly missed his aim, he would ask: "Who shot last with this rifle ?"-and hint that he must have charmed it. The sure mode to disenchant the gun was to shoot a silver bullet out of it.

By the opening of spring, we would generally have quantities of bear's meat and venison salted, dried, and smoked, and numerous packs of skins. We would then make the best of our way home from our distant hunting-grounds; transporting our spoils, sometimes in canoes along the rivers, sometimes on horseback over land, and our return would often be celebrated by feasting and dancing, in true backwoods' style.

I had now lived some time with old Miller, and had become a tolerably expert hunter. Game, however, began to grow scarce. The buffalo had gathered together, as if by universal understanding, and had crossed the Mississippi never to return. Strangers kept pouring into the country, clearing away the forests, and building in all directions. The hunters began to grow restive. Jemmy Kiel, the same of whom I have already spoken for his skill in racooncatching, came to me one day; "I can't stand this any longer,” said he; "we're getting too thick here. Simon Schultz crowds me so, that I have no comfort of my life.”

"Why, how you talk!" said I: "Simon Schultz lives twelve miles off."

"No matter; his cattle run with mine, and I've no idea of living where another man's cattle can run with mine. That's too close neighbourhood: I want elbow-room. This country, too, is growing too poor to live in-there's no game: so two or three of us have made up our minds to follow the buffalo to the Missouri, and we should like to have you of the party." Other hunters of my acquaintance talked in the same manner. This set me thinking; but the more I thought, the more I was perplexed. I had no one to advise with. Old Miller and his associates knew of but one mode of life, and I had no experience in any other; but I had a wider scope of thought. When out hunting alone, I used to forget the sport, and sit for hours together on the trunk of a tree, with rifle in hand, buried in thought, and debating with myself—“Shall I go with Jemmy Kiel and his company, or shall I remain here? If I remain here, there will soon be nothing left to hunt. But am I to be a hunter all my life? Have not I something more in me, than to be carrying a rifle on my shoulder day after day, and dodging about after bears, and deer, and other brute beasts?" My vanity told me I had; and I called to mind my boyish boast to my sister, that I would never return home until I returned a member of Congress for Kentucky?

JAMES HALL (born 1793), author of The Wilderness and the War-path, and one of the chief contributors to the illustrated

History of the Indian Tribes, is a judge in Illinois. His Letters from the West, Notes on the Western States, and other writings, contain many interesting sketches of scenery, manners, and customs on the frontiers; and his style is refined and pleasant, except, perhaps, when he has to describe faithfully the extrayagant language in which the Kentuck settler loves to indulge. In the tale of Pete Featherton, he ventures to introduce supernatural agency'into the backwoods, where a bold hunter follows the trail of a 'stranger' whose footprints are very odd. The only explanation given is in the fact, that Pete Featherton had tarried too long at a store where strong waters were sold. It would require the tact shewn in Irving's Sleepy Hollow to domesticate ghosts in Illinois and Kentucky. The difficulty is admitted by Judge Hall in the introduction to the story:

"We who live on the frontier have little acquaintance with imaginary beings. These gentry never emigrate; they seem to have strong local attachments, which not even the charms of a new country can overcome. A few witches, indeed, were imported into New England by the Puritans; but were so badly used, that the whole race seems to have been disgusted with new settlements. With them the spirit of adventure expired, and the weird-women of the present day wisely cling to the soil of the old countries. That we have but few ghosts, will not be deemed a matter of surprise by those who have observed how miserably destitute we are of accommodations for such inhabitants. We have no baronial castles, nor ruined mansions; no turrets crowned with ivy, nor ancient abbeys crumbling into decay; and it would be a paltry spirit who would be content to wander in the forest by silent rivers and solitary swamps.'

Among the several descriptions of the western prairies, or vast grassy plains, we can hardly find one more distinct and faithful than Judge Hall's; but we prefer laying before our readers the following portrait of a genuine backwoodsman :

A BACKWOODSMAN OF KENTUCKY.

"The inmates of a small cabin on the margin of the Ohio were commencing with the sun the business of the day. A stout, rawboned forester plied his keen axe, and lugging log after log, erected a pile on the ample hearth, sufficiently large to have rendered the last honours to the stateliest ox. A female was paying her morningvisit to the cow-yard, where a numerous herd of cattle claimed her attention. The plentiful breakfast followed-corn-bread, milk, and venison crowned the oaken-board; while a tin coffee-pot of ample dimensions supplied the beverage which is seldom wanting at the morning-repast of the substantial American farmer.