"A citizen of the world, I never found any difficulty in investing my resting place wherever it might be, with the attributes of a home. Although liable to the accusation of barbarism, I must confess that the very happiest moments of my life have been spent in the wilderness of the Far West. I never recall but with pleasure the remembrance of my solitary camp in the Bayou Salado, with no friend near me more faithful than my rifle. With a plentiful supply of dry pine logs on the fire, and its cheerful blaze streaming far up into the sky, illuminating the valley far and near, I would sit enjoying the genial warmth, and watch the blue smoke as it curled upward, building castles in its vapory wreaths. Scarcely did I ever wish to change such hours of freedom for all the luxuries of civilized life; and, unnatural and extraordinary as it may appear, yet such are the fascinations of the life of the mountain hunter, that I believe that not one instance could be adduced of even the most polished and civilized of men, who had once tasted the sweets of its attendant liberty, and freedom from every worldly care, not regretting to exchange them for the monotonous life of the settlements, and not sighing and sighing again for its pleasures and allurements. "A hunter's camp in the Rocky Mountains, is quite a picture. It is invariably made in a picturesque locality, for, like the Indian, the white hunter has an eye to the beautiful. Nothing can be more social and cheering than the welcome blaze of the camp-fire on a cold winter's night, and nothing more amusing or entertaining, if not instructive, than the rough conversation of the simple-minded mountaineers, whose nearly daily task is all of exciting adventure, since their whole existence is spent in scenes of peril and privation. Consequently the narration is a tale of thrilling accidents, and hair-breadth escapes, which, though simple matter-of-fact to them, appears a startling romance to those unacquainted with the lives led by those men, who, with the sky for a roof, and their rifles to supply them with food and clothing, call no man lord or master, and are as free as the game they follow."