“A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider than in others; and then there is usually a green island, covered with trees, dividing it into two streams. Occasionally we stop for a few minutes, maybe to take on wood, maybe for passengers, at some small town or city (I ought to say city, every place is a city here), but the banks are for the most part deep solitudes, overgrown with trees, already in leaf and very green. For miles, and miles, and miles, these solitudes are unbroken by any sign of human life or trace of human footstep; nor is anything seen to move about them but the blue-jay, whose color is so bright and yet so delicate, that it looks like a flying flower. At long intervals, a log cabin, with its little space of cleared land about it, nestles under a rising ground, and sends its thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky. It stands in the corner of the poor field of wheat, which is full of great unsightly stumps, like earthly butchers’-blocks. Sometimes the ground is only just now cleared: the felled trees lying yet upon the soil, and the log house only this morning begun. As we pass this clearing, the settler leans upon his ax or hammer, and looks wistfully at the people from the world. The children creep out of their temporary hut, which is like a gipsy tent upon the ground, and clap their hands and shout. The dog only glances round at us, and then looks up into his master’s face again, as if he were rendered uneasy by any suspension of the common business, and had nothing more to do with pleasures. And there is still the same, eternal foreground.” From Louisville Davy left for Mills’ Point with his “trunk, gun-case, old lady’s pitcher [a present for his wife], and all,” and on July 22d found his son William waiting for him with a team. After a rough drive of thirty-five miles, a glimpse of waving corn gleamed through the scattered pines, and like a voice from the other world rang the cry of the bear-hunter through the wilderness. The scarred and sorrowful hounds about the cabin leaped to their feet as they caught the welcome sound, and with baying that gave the bears of the “harricane” an uneasy quarter of an hour, the gaunt pack rushed to meet the master they loved so well. At his own door there was the joyful reunion to which, in the midst of civic honors and the luxuries of civilization, Davy had looked forward with unsuppressed longing. As the family and the neighbors crowded about him, he placed upon a rude mantel the china pitcher for his wife, and took from its leather case the splendid rifle given him in Philadelphia. There was joy and wonder in plenty for all. His suit of broadcloth was touched with something like awe and reverence by those who had worn homespun all their lives.