They
were strangers to us, but in those days everybody you met in the
wilderness which skirted the Upper Ohio was your friend, if you chose
to regard him so. I was a mere boy then, and was in company with my
father and three other gentlemen, who owned a township of land not far
from Cincinnati; that is not far now, considering the difference in
the mode of travelling between then and now, and we were on our way to
explore that township. I did not regard it as of much value then,
though it has since brought a heap of money to its owners. We found
the company belonging to the other boat busily employed in cooking a
supper of venison and bear-meat, they having in the course of the day
killed two deer and a bear that they found swimming the river. We were
invited to help ourselves; an invitation which, being cordially given,
we as cordially accepted. We had been passing during most of the day
through unbroken forests, standing up in stately majesty on both sides
of the river, and stretching back the Lord knows how far. After the
darkness gathered, the wolves made the wilderness vocal with their
howling. It was the first time I had ever heard them, and for that
matter the last, until since we have been in these woods: but when
that old fellow over the lake lifted up his voice last night, I
recognized it at once.
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