Chapter 7 - Page 2

"There is then a better choice towards the other Ocean?" demanded the
squatter, pointing in the direction of the Pacific.

"There is, and I have seen it all," was the answer of the other, who
dropped his rifle to the earth, and stood leaning on its barrel, like
one who recalled the scenes he had witnessed with melancholy pleasure.
"I have seen the waters of the two seas! On one of them was I born,
and raised to be a lad like yonder tumbling boy. America has grown, my
men, since the days of my youth, to be a country larger than I once
had thought the world itself to be. Near seventy years I dwelt in
York, province and state together:--you've been in York, 'tis like?"

"Not I--not I; I never visited the towns; but often have heard the
place you speak of named. 'Tis a wide clearing there, I reckon."

"Too wide! too wide! They scourge the very 'arth with their axes. Such
hills and hunting-grounds as I have seen stripped of the gifts of the
Lord, without remorse or shame! I tarried till the mouths of my hounds
were deafened by the blows of the chopper, and then I came west in
search of quiet. It was a grievous journey that I made; a grievous
toil to pass through falling timber and to breathe the thick air of
smoky clearings, week after week, as I did! 'Tis a far country too,
that state of York from this!"

"It lies ag'in the outer edge of old Kentuck, I reckon; though what
the distance may be I never knew."

"A gull would have to fan a thousand miles of air to find the eastern
sea. And yet it is no mighty reach to hunt across, when shade and game
are plenty! The time has been when I followed the deer in the
mountains of the Delaware and Hudson, and took the beaver on the
streams of the upper lakes in the same season, but my eye was quick
and certain at that day, and my limbs were like the legs of a moose!
The dam of Hector," dropping his look kindly to the aged hound that
crouched at his feet, "was then a pup, and apt to open on the game the
moment she struck the scent. She gave me a deal of trouble, that slut,
she did!"

"Your hound is old, stranger, and a rap on the head would prove a
mercy to the beast."

"The dog is like his master," returned the trapper, without appearing
to heed the brutal advice the other gave, "and will number his days,
when his work amongst the game is over, and not before. To my eye
things seem ordered to meet each other in this creation. 'Tis not the
swiftest running deer that always throws off the hounds, nor the
biggest arm that holds the truest rifle. Look around you, men; what
will the Yankee Choppers say, when they have cut their path from