the skirts had long since been transferred to the cuffs and elbows, where
they appeared in huge patches--covered the upper part of his body; while
the lower boasted a pair of buckskin breeches and leather wrappers,
somewhat its junior in age, but its rival in mud and maculation. An old
round fur hat, intended originally for a boy, and only made to fit his
head by being slit in sundry places at the bottom, thus leaving a dozen
yawning gaps, through which, as through the chinks of a lattice, stole
out as many stiff bunches of black hair, gave to the capital excrescence
an air as ridiculous as it was truly uncouth; which was not a little
increased by the absence on one side of the brim, and by a loose fragment
of it hanging down on the other. To give something martial to an
appearance in other respects so outlandish and ludicrous, he had his
rifle, and other usual equipments of a woodsman, including the knife and
tomahawk, the first of which he carried in his hand, swinging it about at
every moment, with a vigour and apparent carelessness well fitted to
discompose a nervous person, had any such happened among his auditors. As
if there was not enough in his figure, visage, and attire to move the
mirth of beholders, he added to his other attractions a variety of
gestures and antics of the most extravagant kinds, dancing, leaping,
and dodging about, clapping his hands and cracking his heels together,
with the activity, restlessness, and, we may add, the grace, of a
jumping-jack. Such was the worthy, or unworthy, son of Salt River, a man
wholly unknown to history, though not to local and traditionary fame, and
much less to the then inhabitants of Bruce's Station, to whom he related
his news of the Jibbenainosay with that emphasis and importance of tone
and manner which are most significantly expressed in the phrase of
"laying down the law."

As soon as he saw the commander of the station approaching, he cleared
the throng around him by a skip and a hop, seized the colonel by the