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The unwise license and injurious freedoms accorded
to youth in our day and country, will render
it unnecessary to explain how it was that,
with father and mother, a good homestead, and
excellent resources, I was yet suffered at the
early age of eighteen, to set out on a desultory
and almost purposeless expedition, among some
of the wildest regions of the South-West. It
would be as unnecessary and, perhaps, much
more difficult, to show what were my own motives
in undertaking such a journey. A truant
disposition, a love of adventure, or, possibly, the
stray glances of some forest maiden, may all be
assumed as good and sufficient reasons, to set a
warm heart wandering, and provoke wild impulses
in the blood of one, by nature impetuous
enough, and, by education, very much the master
of his own will. With a proud heart, hopeful of all
things if thoughtless of any, as noble a steed as

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ever shook a sable mane over a sunny prairie, and
enough money, liberally calculated, to permit an
occasional extravagance, whether in excess or
charity, I set out one sunny winter's morning
from Leaside, our family place, carrying with me
the tearful blessings of my mother, and as kind a
farewell from my father, as could decently comport
with the undisguised displeasure with which
he had encountered the first expression of my
wish to go abroad. Well might he disapprove
of a determination which was so utterly without
an object. But our discussion on this point need
not be resumed. Enough, that, if “my path was
all before me,” I was utterly without a guide.
It was, besides, my purpose to go where there
were few if any paths; regions as wild as they
were pathless; among strange tribes and races;
about whose erring and impulsive natures we
now and then heard such tales of terror, and of
wonder, as carried us back to the most venerable
periods of feudal history, and seemed to promise
us a full return and realization of their strangest
and saddest legends. Of stories such as these,
the boy sees only the wild and picturesque as
pects,—such as are beautiful with a startling
beauty—such as impress his imagination rather
than his thoughts, and presenting the truth to his
eyes through the medium of his fancies, divest it
of whatever is coarse, or cold, or cruel, in its
composition. It was thus that I had heard of
these things, and thus that, instead of repelling, as

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they would have done, robbed of that charm of
distance which equally beautifies in the moral as
in the natural world, they invited my footsteps,
and seduced me from the more appropriate domestic
world in which my lot had been cast.

With a light heart, full of expectation, a free
steed that seemed rather to swim along through
space, than tread monotonously over the rugged
ground, the day passed away with an almost unnoted
flight. My eyes had been charmed in the
observation of trees and groves, picturesque objects
of sight in hill and dale, wood and water,
and such occasional more worldly matters, as
were provoked by long ranges of whitened cotton
fields, or yellow corn yet bristling in unbroken
rows. At the close of the day, I had reached a
cabin where I found shelter for the night, and at
early dawn, I again set forth, with the promise
of another day of generous sunshine. This day
was consumed like the last, and with equal satisfaction
to myself. The buoyant spirit of youth
rises in exultation in any exercise, which seems to
impart equal freedom to soul and body; and there
is something of the same triumphant pulse in the
heart, galloping over the prairies, over the hills, or
through the long cathedral ranges of gigantic pine
forests, which one feels on the deck of a fine ship,
careering over the billows of the broad Atlantic,
with a breeze that sends the foam flying at every
plunge, from the bold prow of the imperial vessel.
The man is wonderfully lifted with the consciousness

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of having at his command, and being able to
command, such a noble animal as the horse, and
rapidity of motion is the source of an intoxication,
of a sublime sort, of the character of which we
can form a good conception from the interest we
take in a race, whether of steeds or steamboats;
the danger of being hurled down by the one or
blown up by the other, being, in both cases, absolutely
and entirely forgotten. Mine was a nature
particularly to exult in such exercises, my
temperament being wholly sanguine, and the indulgence
of my parents having left it to an unrestrained
exercise, which rendered it feverishly
irritable when not engaged in such performances
as were grateful to my excitable imagination.
After the close of the second day of my journey,
it seemed to me as if both my horse and self could
have begun anew, with a more buoyant spirit
than before,—as if the toil itself refreshed us, and
as if no more grateful object lay before us, than
just be permitted to be wander on, and on,—“the
world forgetting, by the world forgot.” Certainly,
the true secret of perpetual life, is perpetual
motion. Find the one, and we secure the other.
Alas! the want of daylight, is the great drawback
to our progress and discoveries. We have
just begun to make them when the curtain falls
upon us.

The close of the second day brought me to the
foot of a long range of hills, the lower steps possibly
of the great Apalachian chain, inclining to

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the Mississippi. It also brought me to the very
borders of what was in that day, known as the
region of doubt and shadow. I had reached the
confines of civilization—even such imperfect civilization
as belonged to our thinly settled frontiers.
I was now ninety miles from Leaside, and only
separated by a narrow wall of hills from that
strange region of forest mystery and romance,
about which so many surprising stories had been
told me. This also was the Indian country—
here the red men still lingered, mixed up with
reckless, renegade whites, who preferred the wild
privileges of savage, to the more wholesome, but
seemingly less attractive pleasures, of civilized
life. As I thought over this taste, I cold not but
shudder to discover that such also, to some extent,
was the feeling in my own bosom. But I
was too young to encourage unpleasant reflections,
and for these but little time was allowed
me. Just on the edge of this neutral ground—
this debateable land—neither savage nor social—
stood a house that has since had more than one
remarkable history. It was a miserable shell of
logs, roughly hewn, of two stories, to which, in
the rear, was appended a long shed of frame-work,
intended to contain some three chambers,
or, upon a press of company—passage way included—
possibly four. It was a public of notorious
resort—standing almost astride the area,
from which diverged four roads, leading to as
many different quarters of country. It was

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consequently much frequented, and the landlord,
who will probably be well remembered by many
as Jephson Yannaker, was, at the time of which I
speak, doing a thriving business. There were
many witless lads like myself, travelling for their
humors, and many more, not so witless, but more
reckless, travelling in the same regions—at our
expense. I had not much time allowed me to
examine the exterior of this establishment, before
a stout, shock-headed, burly, red-faced, but kindly
looking personage, whom I soon learned to be
Yannaker himself, advanced from the door-way
to the head of my horse.

“Come, 'light, stranger,—you're just in time to
shake a leg with the best of them. 'Light! I'll
see to the critter.”

His words were explained a moment after, as
the discordant twang of a half-tuned fiddle smote
my ears from the interior. In entering, I had
just time to discover that several horses were
hitched to neighboring trees, and on one side of
the premises, but rather nearer to the house, there
stood a sort of travelling carriage of rude structure—
a strong, unwieldy vehicle, to which two
able draught horses were still partially attached.
From a few bundles of fodder at their feet, it
seemed to be the design of their driver, who was
busy in the carriage, that they should enjoy their
forage where they stood.

But the sight within made me forget everything
without. The hall ran nearly the whole

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length of the building, and it was comparatively
a large one. A bright fire was blazing in the
chimney, and a matter of thirty persons, or even
more, were strewn around the apartment. Of
these, though less than half, a fair proportion
were women. Near the fire sat the fiddler, the
croakings and creakings of whose crazy instrument
had assaulted me on my first arrival. He
was still busy in the seemingly hopeless task of
screwing its strings into something like symphonious
exercise and utterance. He was a plain
country lad, in homespun, with a cap of coonskin
still clinging to his head, which swung pendulously
over his fiddle, as he now jerked at the
keys, and now jostled with the bow.

But there was nothing in his appearance calculated
to detain my glance. This now roved
about the assembly, which promised to be as
interesting as it was certainly promiscuous and
picturesque. The men were stout fellows all,
of the true farm-yard breed, famous at the flail,
and with fists, whose seeming efficiency reminded
me more than once of the powers ascribed to
those of Maximin, the Gaul, who could fell a
bullock at a blow. It did not seem as if they
had prepared themselves for the festivities they
were about to enjoy. Their costume was that
of the farm-yard. Plain blue or yellow home-spun,
rough shoes, and, though the winter had
fairly set in, many were the bronzed and naked

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breasts displayed by the open shirt of coarse
cotton. The frolic, so far as they were concerned,
was evidently extempore. They had
been suffered no time for the toilet. But this did
not seem greatly to abash them. The unconventional
world in which they lived, had rendered
them somewhat insensible to that feeling of
mauvaise honte, which would have been sure,
in such a case, to have distressed the half civilized
lad to an immeasurable extent. They showed
no concern at the matter, but dashed forward,
each to his favorite lass, as coolly and confidently
as if fashion had received her dues, and the toilet
all the necessary sacrifices. And there was, in
this very freedom, a sort of savage grace, which
greatly tended to lessen the rudeness of its general
aspects. Most of the fellows were well
formed—rough, but erect and easy—and having
that use of their limbs, boldly flexible, which the
life of the hunter and the horseman is very apt
to impart in the case of a well made person.
Where had these lads come from? From a
space of country twenty miles round, through
which the very whispers of a fiddle make themselves
heard, heaven knows how, and whose attractions
among such a people are felt, heaven
only knows to what extent. Some of them were
professional hunters; some, idle ramblers like
myself; and some few might have been gathered
in the immediate neighborhood. But, as I could
give no very good reason for my own presence

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in such a place, it would be unreasonable to expect
me to account for theirs.

The girls,—but here the case is very different.
When did ever damsel find herself in such a
situation without contriving some of her secret
graces before the toilet? Though she mirrors
her beauties in the stream, she will yet manage
to give them some of those helps of art, a knowledge
of which she seems to have caught by
instinct. There were some twelve or fourteen
damsels in the room, and a profusion of ribbons—
and of these a country girl must have the gaudiest.
Fancy, gentle reader, the picture for yourself.
See Mary with her bandeau of Hibernian
green—her belt of golden yellow—her necker-chief
that seems to have been dyed in summer
rainbows, and her dress that might have been
made out of their skirts. And there is Susan in
her head dress, and Sally in her blue and scarlet,
and Jenny in her “Jim-along-Josey,” without
ever dreaming that her style of body garment
would ever become a fashion in the great city,
and be known by such an imposing name. I am
not good at such details, and you must conceive
them for yourself. It is very certain, however,
that, with all their superior pains-taking at the
toilet, the women lacked the graces—however
inferior—which distinguished the deportment of
the men. They sat, stiffly and awkwardly, like
so many waxen figures, each on her stool, as if
troubled with a disquieting apprehension that any

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unwise movement would overturn the fair fabric
of her present state, and be equally fatal to head-dress,
handkerchief and happiness. There was
one exception to this uniform display of ostentation
and awkwardness,—of whom more hereafter.

But the waxen images were made to move.
The fiddle began to speak in tolerable tune, and
the brawny boys sprang across the ocean of
floor that separated them from the green beauties
on the sunny banks, and appropriated them, I
suppose, according to previous arrangement. In
the twinkling of an eye they were upon the
ground, every mother's son of them, and busy in
the mazes of the country dance. Such a shuffling
of feet, such a tearing of music to very tatters, by
that crazy violin, and the inveterate musician,
who scraped away as if catgut could bring about
the noblest catastrophe,—would require the creation
of a special muse to describe, and, until that
event, we leave the affair to the quick conception
and conjecture of the reader.

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