The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hunters' Feast, by Mayne Reid

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Hunters' Feast
Conversations Around the Camp Fire

Author: Mayne Reid

Release Date: November 15, 2007 [EBook #23499]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUNTERS' FEAST ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Hunters' Feast, by Captain Mayne Reid.

________________________________________________________________________
The story starts in the city of St Louis, towards the end of the summer
of some year in the nineteenth century. Reid collects together a group
of six men who would pay to take part in an expedition, camping and
hunting, into the prairies. They take with them a couple of paid men,
professionals who would give them very necessary guidance. They all
make a pact that they would each tell a round of tales around the camp
fire, such stories to be amusing and instructive.

Reid himself is something of a naturalist, as we can learn from his many
other books. We are given these tales just as they are told, in good
English if told by an educated man, and in the dialect of the less
educated ones. This latter arrangement makes the checking of the OCR
transcriptions a little difficult, but never mind.

What people may find a little tedious is Reid's habit of giving the
naturalists' Latin names for the various animals and plants described.

________________________________________________________________________
THE HUNTERS' FEAST, BY CAPTAIN MAYNE REID.

CHAPTER ONE.

A HUNTING PARTY.

On the western bank of the Mississippi, twelve miles below the
_embouchure_ of the Missouri, stands the large town of Saint Louis,
poetically known as the "Mound City." Although there are many other
large towns throughout the Mississippi Valley, Saint Louis is the true
metropolis of the "far west"--of that semi-civilised, ever-changing belt
of territory known as the "Frontier."

Saint Louis is one of those American cities in the history of which
there is something of peculiar interest. It is one of the oldest of
North-American settlements, having been a French trading port at an
early peri