gray stuff, of a make sufficiently _outré_, but which, fitting him
snugly, served to set off his robust and well-made person to the utmost
advantage. A fox-skin cap, of domestic manufacture, the tail of which,
studiously preserved, obviated any necessity for a foreign tassel,
rested slightly upon his head, giving a unique finish to his appearance,
which a fashionable hat would never have supplied. Such was the
personage, who, so fortunately for Ralph, plied his craft in that lonely
region; and who, stumbling upon his insensible form at nightfall, as
already narrated, carefully conveyed him to his own lodgings at the
village-inn of Chestatee.

The village, or town--for such it was in the acceptation of the time and
country--may well deserve some little description; not for its intrinsic
importance, but because it will be found to resemble some ten out of
every dozen of the country towns in all the corresponding region. It
consisted of thirty or forty dwellings, chiefly of logs; not, however,
so immediately in the vicinity of one another as to give any very
decided air of regularity and order to their appearance. As usual, in
all the interior settlements of the South and West, wherever an eligible
situation presented itself, the squatter laid the foundation-logs of his
dwelling, and proceeded to its erection. No public squares, and streets
laid out by line and rule, marked conventional progress in an orderly
and methodical society; but, regarding individual convenience as the
only object in arrangements of this nature, they took little note of any
other, and to them less important matters. They built where the land
rose into a ridge of moderate and gradual elevation, commanding a long
reach of prospect; where a good spring threw out its crystal waters,
jetting, in winter and summer alike, from the hillside or the rock; or,
in its absence, where a fair branch, trickling over a bed of small and
yellow pebbles, kept up a perpetually clear and undiminishing current;