What most interested me was his tales of adventure, of which he was often the hero; one possessed especial interest, partly from its own essential oddness, and partly from its hinging on a phenomenon which I had more than once witnessed. I allude to the "caving in," or breaking down, of the banks of the Mississippi River, caused by the undermining of the current, when large strips of land, often whole acres, thickly studded with gigantic trees, slip into the water, to be "swished" away with a violence eclipsing the fury of fabled Charybdis. It was at the time of these land-slides that old Zeb had met with this adventure, which, by the way, came very near killing him. I shall try to set it forth in his own piquant _patois_, as nearly as I can transcribe it from the tablets of my memory. I was indebted for the tale to a chance circumstance, for old Zeb seldom volunteered a story, unless something suggested it. We had killed a fine buck, that had run several hundred times his length with the bullet in his body, and fallen within a few feet of the bank of the great river. While stopping to dress him, old Zeb looked around keenly, exclaiming, "If this ain't the place whar I war _trapped in a tree_! Thar's the very saplin' itself!" I looked at the "saplin'." It was a swamp cypress of some thirty feet in girth, by at least a hundred and fifty in height. "Trapped in a tree!" I echoed with emphatic interest, perceiving that he was upon the edge of some odd adventure; and, desirous of tempting him to the relation, I continued: "Trapped in a tree! How could that be with an old forester like you?" "It dud be, howsomedever," was the quaint reply of my companion; "an' not so very long agone, neyther. Ef ye'll sit down a bit, I'll tell ye all, as I _kin_ tell it; for I hain't forgotten neery sarcumstance; an' I'll lay odds, young feller, thet ef ever you be as badly skeeart, you'll carry the recollection o' that skeer ter yer coffin.