at the Sierra Nevada. 335

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Curate becomes much attached to the Wanderers. Arrival of Mr. and
Mrs. Duncan and family. Whirlwind demands Jane in marriage. Jane
refuses, and the Indians take their departure. The curate gives an
account of the discoveries he made of a singular road, city and
pyramid. Prosperous condition of Mr. Duncan's family. The lapse of
twelve years. Change of their condition. Conclusion. 342

THE WANDERERS:

OR,

LIFE IN THE WESTERN WILDS.

Chapter First.

Mr. Duncan's Discontentment. He starts for the West.

Near the Cold Springs, in Lafayette county, Missouri, lived Mr. Duncan,
a sturdy woodsman, who emigrated thither with his father, while the
Mississippi valley was still a wilderness, inhabited by wild beasts, or
the still more savage Indians. His grandfather was an eastern man; but
had bared his brawny arm on many a battle field, and had earned the
right to as many broad acres as he chose to occupy. So, at least, he
said, on leaving his eastern home, after peace had been declared, for
the then verge of civilization--the Ohio. Here the soldier lived to see
the wilderness blossom like the rose, and here he died, grieving that
infirmity prevented his flying from the din of the sledge hammer, and
the busy hum of mechanical life. Mr. Duncan's father, in the vigor of
manhood, crossed the Mississippi, and settled at the Cold Springs, a
region then isolated from civilization, as the Ohio was many years
before the white man had planted his foot west of the Alleghanies. But
he lived to see the silent echoes resound to the shrill whistle of the
engine, and luxury with its still but mighty sway enervate the sons and
daughters of the pioneers, until the one quailed at the sight of danger
and the other dosed away the morning in kid slippers and curl-papers.
Time claimed its own, and he died; and then his son, the Mr. Duncan of
our narrative, began to turn his attention to the west, as his
grandfather and his father had done before him. He had married a
trapper's daughter, twenty years before, and his family consisted now
of four sons and two daughters, an adopted son, and his brother-in-law,
Andy Howe, who had spent his life in trapping, and trading with the
Indians.

Lewis, his eldest son, nineteen years of age, was a man in strength,
proportion and judgment, cool and prompt in emergencies, but on
ordinary occasions caring for little e