a pirogue, some five
and twenty years ago. We tied up one night by the side of another
similar craft, that had gone down ahead of us, the people on board of
which had landed and built a camp-fire, and erected their tent. They
were strangers to us, but in those days everybody you met in the
wilderness which skirted the Upper Ohio was your friend, if you chose
to regard him so. I was a mere boy then, and was in company with my
father and three other gentlemen, who owned a township of land not far
from Cincinnati; that is not far now, considering the difference in
the mode of travelling between then and now, and we were on our way to
explore that township. I did not regard it as of much value then,
though it has since brought a heap of money to its owners. We found
the company belonging to the other boat busily employed in cooking a
supper of venison and bear-meat, they having in the course of the day
killed two deer and a bear that they found swimming the river. We were
invited to help ourselves; an invitation which, being cordially given,
we as cordially accepted. We had been passing during most of the day
through unbroken forests, standing up in stately majesty on both sides
of the river, and stretching back the Lord knows how far. After the
darkness gathered, the wolves made the wilderness vocal with their
howling. It was the first time I had ever heard them, and for that
matter the last, until since we have been in these woods: but when
that old fellow over the lake lifted up his voice last night, I
recognized it at once. I can't say I admired it as a musical
performance then, and I don't appreciate its harmony now. If there are
those who like it, why, _de gustibus non_, and so forth.

"But I set out to tell the story that the old Ohio pilot told that
night, while the travellers sat smoking around their camp-fires, and
the wolves were howling in the wilderness about us. I do not, of
course, vouch for its truth; I simply tell it as he told it to us. He
seemed to believe it himself, for he told it with a gravity of face,
and a seriousness of manner, which would ill comport with its falsity.
His hearers did not seem to regard it as passing belief, but they
laughed at the idea of drowning a bear.

"'Twenty odd years ago,' said the old pilot, as he lighted his pipe
and seated himself on the head of a whisky-keg, 'there warn't a great
many people along the Ohio, except Ingins and bears, and we didn't
like to cultivate a