ile riding
that morning from the north side, he had stumbled upon the corse of an
Indian, which bore all the marks of having been a late victim to the
wandering demon of the woods,--we shall say nothing; but the appearance
and conduct of the narrator, one of the first, and perhaps the parent,
of the race of men who have made Salt River so renowned in story, were
such as to demand a less summary notice. He was stout, bandy-legged,
broad-shouldered, and bull-headed, ugly, and villanous of look; yet with
an impudent, swaggering, joyous self-esteem traced in every feature and
expressed in every action of body, that rather disposed the beholder to
laugh than to be displeased at his appearance. An old blanket-coat, or
wrap-rascal, once white, but now of the same muddy brown hue that stained
his visage--and once also of sufficient length to defend his legs, though
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