170

THE LAST OF THE ELK.

BY AN OLD BACKWOODSMAN.

WHEN I joined the hunting party, at an early hour in the morning, agreeably to previous arrangement, I found that the squire's better-half had been busied, I know not how long, in preparing our breakfast. There was the squire, his eldest son, and Judge Norris, present, all arrayed in their ordinary winter's hunting garb, which consists of a loose coarse shirt over the other clothes, a white napkin folded round the head, and a broad belt of buckskin around the waist, with a hunting-knife stuck therein, in its long leathern sheath. Captain Bostick, also, was to be of the party, but he was to join us on our route along the valley which led to the hunting-ground. Notwithstanding the hour (for it still wanted nearly two hours of day), an immense fire was blazing upon the rude hearth, which extended across the entire breadth of the log-building, the heat of which must have rendered the cooking process a confoundedly hot business. However, Mrs. Kearney appeared to stand fire admirably. She evidently had not quite completed her task, for she was in the act of baking her first buck-wheat cakes, and buck-wheat cakes must be eaten piping hot from the pan or griddle. Considering the situation-for it was still a country but partially reclaimed from its original wild and rude state-Mrs. K- - had

managed to provide a breakfast sufficient for twenty persons at the least, were they all "as hungry as hunters." Among the dishes (which evidently had been awaiting my coming) were bear-steaks, venison-steaks, fricaseed fowls, fried pork, boiled potatoes, newly-baked buns (biscuit, Yankee), sopped toast, huge pickled cucumbers, preserved pumpkin, not omitting buck-wheat cakes; so that "I guess we were considerably well off for hot victuals." The coffee, which accompanied this profusion of solids, was not, it must be confessed, of the first order-it was neither Persian, Turkey, nor even West Indian, but simply indigenous rye, parched or nearly burnt, an article commonly used in the back settlements as a substitute for coffee (though a poor one), where it is familiarly called "domestic." Cream and sugar there were none, being articles but seldom indulged in in the American hunter's cabin.

Only a few minutes were suffered to elapse, after I joined the party, before we took our seats at the wellplenished board; and, although it must be admitted that the backwoodsmen of America practise the "free and easy" much more than the polite, when eating becomes the order of the day, since I was but an honoured guest on the occasion alluded to, it would ill become me-in those days a mighty hunter in that land-were I to stop and turn hypercritic. Probably the reader will imagine, that the party I was joining in this hunting expedition was composed of persons somewhat above the ordinary grades of society, since I mentioned a judge and a squire as belonging to it. Acting upon the idea associated with these names in England, this would assuredly seem the case; but it should be borne in mind where this occurred-in

the rude forests in the interior of America, where titles are as common as the leaves on the trees, and " as cheap as the outside slabs at a Yankee saw-mill," where you get them for nothing, and the owner of the mill thanks you for hauling them away. Judge Norris was the owner of a hundred-acre lot of land, worth three or four shillings an acre; but, in order to maintain his family in the humblest way, he was compelled to do something besides working upon his own farm, not half subdued from its original wild state, and he, therefore, occasionally took journeys to more thickly inhabited parts of the country, peddling a little tin-ware, and a few essences; and, when not otherwise employed, he would take his rifle into the woodsnot for amusement, but in order to procure food for his family, and some peltry, to trade away at the distant store for a little powder and ball, or such other necessaries as the family stood the most in need of. But he actually was, at the same time a judge;-once a quarter he sat upon the bench with the president judge, for which he received a very small remuneration from the state. Regarding the squire, I cannot say so much for the legality of his title. He was by birth an Irishman, but when very young had emigrated to America, where he married a Yankee woman shortly afterwards,-moved westward into the wilderness, settled in an uninhabited district, where he established a ferry across the river, as soon as there was a track through the forest in that direction; and, although he never was in the commission of the peace, somehow or other he invariably went by the title of Squire Kearney. Captain Bostick (who afterwards joined our party) was a native of the German settlements on the Mohawk, where,

during the revolution, his father had been a militia captain, from whence, probably, the son had derived his title. With as little claim to it as the captain and squire had to their titles, I was familiarly addressed by my companions as "colonel," which is a very convenient travelling cognomen all the world over.

Judge Norris was the first to introduce the business we were about to embark upon, and, although a Yankee by birth, he by no means dealt largely in Yankeeisms. He spoke nearly as follows:-"Gentlemen," said the judge, "I cannot help feeling a sort of pity or regret, or something of the nature, regarding the business we have met to engage in. It is not that I so much grieve at the falling off of game in this region of country, although I calculate that that does, in some measure, affect both the squire and myself; but I have just been thinking over old scenes, and making comparisons between the present and the past. When I first settled in these parts, now something over twenty years ago, you see, colonel," said he, addressing me, "there were no inhabitants west of Sugar Creek but the squire's family and mine, and then, we could truly say, we had the hunting of this district mainly to ourselves; but of late years so many settlers have found their way to these parts, that the hunting now is scarcely worth engaging in. Then there was plenty of beaver in most of the upper creek valleys; and as for elk, why they were more abundant than the deer are at present; but it is now near upon ten years since I last saw a beaver, and but one elk remains between the two mountain ridges, and it is in the destruction of that 'last of the elk' that we are going upon. I somehow feel reluctant to ex

terminate this last of the race of these noble creatures,-for we need hardly hope for another herd of them finding their way through the settlements that are growing up between us and the lone wilderness, for there it is that the timid elk loves to roam; and yet, if we were to spare its life, some of the new comers would be less inclined to mercy, so there would be little chance of its getting through the winter. You have been at my house, colonel, and probably may recollect the sloping bank in the rear of it. When I first explored those parts, before there was any settlement here away at all, when I looked down from thence through the grove of maples, I counted sixteen elk, and elegant ones they were, browsing, within rifle-shot, between where the house now stands and the adjoining bank of the creek. That was the chief inducement for my settling where I did, for I had intended to go farther down towards the main valley of the Chemung ; but there I fixed my tent, and for many years enjoyed as good hunting as I reasonably could desire." There was no doubting the sincerity of the judge's remorse at having assisted in the destruction of the last of that fine race of animals, that had not only afforded him a long series of pleasant recreations, but, what was probably of greater importance, had frequently supplied his family with food, as well as yielded him small returns in money— an article exceedingly useful in its way, even in his remote situation. I could not perceive that the judge's sentiments were appreciated or entertained by the squire or his son; and, although I think that I should have felt as he did, had I been similarly situated, I fully acquiesced in the opinion, that if we spared this, "the last of the elk,"