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Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1854,
By D. APPLETON & COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New-York.

Dedication TO
THE LOVERS OF NATURE,

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WHETHER RESIDING IN THE CROWDED CITY, PLEASANT
VILLAGE, OR NATIVE WILD,
This Volume
IS CORDIALLY DEDICATED.

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PREFACE.

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The “Hive of the Bee-Hunter” has one object,
which the author would impress upon such
readers as may honor him with their attention.

An effort has been made, in the course of
these sketches, to give to those personally unacquainted
with the scenery of the southwest, some
idea of the country, its surface, and vegetation.

In these matters, the author has endeavored
to be critically correct, indulging in the honest
ambition of giving some information, while depicting
the germinating evidences of the great
original characters national to these localities.

The southwest, with its primeval and evergreen
forests, its unbounded prairies, and its many and
continuous rivers, presents contributions of nature,
which the pilgrims from every land, for the first
time, behold with wonder and awe.

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Here, in their vast interior solitudes, far removed
from trans-Atlantic influences, are alone
to be found, in the more comparative infancy of
our country, characters truly sui generis—truly
American.

What man would be, uninfluenced by contact
with the varied associations of long civilization, is
here partially demonstrated in the denizens of the
interior of a mighty continent.

The discovery of America,—its vast extent,—
and its developing destiny,—present facts, which
far surpass the wildest imagery of the dreamers
of the olden times.

There are growing up, in these primitive wilds,
men, whose daily life and conversation, when detailed,
form exaggerations; but whose histories
are, after all, only the natural developments of
the mighty associations which surround them.

CONTENTS.

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