suspected in some cases to have reached men whose faith was opposed to
warfare and bloodshed. The legend of Wandering Nathan is, no doubt, an
idle and unfounded one, although some vague notions touching the
existence of just such a personage, whose habitat was referred to Western
Pennsylvania, used to prevail among the cotemporaries, or immediate
successors, of Boone and Kenton, M'Colloch and Wetzel. It is enough,
however, for the author to be sustained in such a matter by poetical
possibility; and he can afford to be indifferent to a charge which has
the scarce consistent merit of imputing to him, at one and the same time,
hostility towards the most warlike and the most peaceable of mankind.




NICK OF THE WOODS.




CHAPTER I.


The sun of an August afternoon, 1782, was yet blazing upon the rude
palisades and equally rude cabins of one of the principal stations in
Lincoln county, when a long train of emigrants, issuing from the
southern forest, wound its way over the clearings, and among the waving
maize-fields that surrounded the settlement, and approached the chief
gate of its enclosure.

The party was numerous, consisting perhaps of seven or eight score