21. In the McAfee MSS. there is an amusing mention of the skin of a huge bull elk, killed by the father, which the youngsters christened "old ellick"; they used to quarrel for the possession of it on cold nights, as it was very warm, though if the hairside was turned in it became slippery and apt to slide off the bed. 22. On the mountains the climate, flora, and fauna were all those of the north, not of the adjacent southern lowlands. The ruffed grouse, red squirrel, snow bird, various Canadian warblers, and a peculiar species of boreal field-mouse, the _evotomys_, are all found as far south as the Great Smokies. 23. Doddridge's "Settlements and Indian Wars," (133) written by an eyewitness; it is the most valuable book we have on old-time frontier ways and customs. 24. The land laws differed at different times in different colonies; but this was the usual size at the outbreak of the Revolution, of the farms along the western frontier, as under the laws of Virginia, then obtaining from the Holston to the Alleghany, this amount was allotted every settler who built a cabin or raised a crop of corn. 25. Beside the right to 400 acres, there was also a preemption right to 1,000 acres more adjoining to be secured by a land-office warrant. As between themselves the settlers had what they called "tomahawk rights," made by simply deadening a certain number of trees with a hatchet. They were similar to the rights conferred in the west now by what is called a "claim shack" or hut, built to hold some good piece of land; that is, they conferred no title whatever, except that sometimes men would pay for them rather than have trouble with the claimant. 26. McAfee MSS. (particularly Autobiography of Robert McAfee). 27. To this day it is worn in parts of the Rocky Mountains, and even occasionally, here and there, in the Alleghanies. 28. The above is the description of one of Boon's rifles, now in the possession of Col. Durrett. According to the inscription on the barrel it was made at Louisville (Ky.), in 1782, by M. Humble. It is perfectly plain; whereas one of Floyd's rifles, which I have also seen, is much more highly finished, and with some ornamentation. 29. For the opinion of a foreign military observer on the phenomenal accuracy of backwoods markmanship, see General Victor Collot's "Voyage en Amérique," p. 242. 30. MS. copy of Matthew Clarkson's Journal in 1766. 31. McAfee MSS. (Autobiography of Robert R. McAfee). 32. _Do._ 33. Memoirs of the Hist. Soc. of Penn., 1826. Account of first settlements, etc., by John Watson (1804). 34. _Do._ An admirable account of what such a frolic was some thirty-five years later is to be found in Edward Eggleston's "Circuit Rider." 35. Such incidents are mentioned again and again by Watson, Milfort, Doddridge, Carr, and other writers.