36. McClung's "Western Adventures." All eastern and European observers comment with horror on the border brawls, especially the eye-gouging. Englishmen, of course, in true provincial spirit, complacently contrasted them with their own boxing fights; Frenchmen, equally of course, were more struck by the resemblances than the differences between the two forms of combat. Milfort gives a very amusing account of the "Anglo-Américains d'une espèce particulière," whom he calls "crakeurs ou gaugeurs," (crackers or gougers). He remarks that he found them "tous borgnes," (as a result of their pleasant fashion of eye-gouging--a backwoods bully in speaking of another would often threaten to "measure the length of his eye-strings,") and that he doubts if there can exist in the world "des hommes plus méchants que ces habitants." These fights were among the numerous backwoods habits that showed Scotch rather than English ancestry. "I attempted to keep him down, in order to improve my success, after the manner of my own country." ("Roderick Random"). 37. Watson. 38. Doddridge. 39. McAfee MSS. 40. Watson. 41. McAfee MSS. See also Doddridge and Watson. 42. Doddridge, 156. He gives an interesting anecdote of one man engaged in helping such a pack-train, the bell of whose horse was stolen. The thief was recovered, and whipped as a punishment, the owner exclaiming as he laid the strokes lustily on: "Think what a rascally figure I should make in the streets of Baltimore without a bell on my horse." He had never been out of the woods before; he naturally wished to look well on his first appearance in civilized life, and it never occurred to him that a good horse was left without a bell anywhere. 43. An instance of this, which happened in my mother's family, has been mentioned elsewhere ("Hunting Trips of a Ranchman"). Even the wolves occasionally attacked man; Audubon gives an example. 44. Doddridge, 194. Dodge, in his "Hunting Grounds of the Great West," gives some recent instances. Bears were sometimes dangerous to human life. Doddridge, 64. A slave on the plantation of my great-grandfather in Georgia was once regularly scalped by a she-bear whom he had tried to rob of her cubs, and ever after he was called, both by the other negroes and by the children on the plantation, "Bear Bob." 45. Schopf, I., 404. 46. The insignificant garrisons at one or two places need not be taken into account, as they were of absolutely no effect.