Meantime he had been elected colonel of militia over a bumptious rival. Now, all at once, and perhaps originally more as a matter of jest than anything else, as was the case in his second candidacy, his name came up for the legislature. Crockett inaugurated a canvass on lines of his own. In brief, he talked little of politics, for he knew nothing of such matters. He told a brief story, traded a ’coon skin for a bottle of liquor, treated the crowd, promised to sell a wolf scalp and treat them again, and so passed on to the next gathering. He was elected without difficulty. But of course misfortune once more must overtake our hero, and he must move again, this time as far as he can go and not cross the Mississippi River. This next home, and the last one he established, was made in the northwestern corner of Tennessee, on the Obion River, near the Mississippi River, not far from what is now known as Reel Foot Lake, and in the heart of that wild country then known as the “Shakes.” This was near the submerged lands affected by the New Madrid earthquakes, a country naturally rich in many ways. It was a cane-brake country, a heavily timbered but somewhat broken region, crossed now and again by terrific windfalls locally known as “hurricanes.” You may see such country in the Mississippi Delta to-day, two hundred miles south of Crockett’s home. Crockett’s neighbors on the Obion were three in number, respectively seven, fifteen and twenty miles distant. On his trip of exploration he planted his first crop of corn by means of a sharp stick, just as he had broken the earth at each of his earlier homes. He was rejoiced to find that the corn grew excellently, and yet more rejoiced to know that he had found a superb hunting ground. In his early life his game consisted chiefly of deer and turkey. Here bear, deer and turkey were very numerous, and there were also elk occasionally to be seen. The buffalo is never mentioned up to this time in Crockett’s life, and that animal had probably by this time, 1822, become practically extinct in Kentucky and Missouri.