I have had many opportunities to have the history of my life
written up, but would never consent to anything of the kind.
Finally, however, I decided to write it myself, and while it is
written in very rude and unpolished language, by an old
frontiersman who never went to school a day in his life, all he
knows he picked up himself, yet it is the true history of the most
striking events, trials, troubles, tribulations, hardships,
pleasures and satisfactions of a long life of strange adventure
among wild scenes and wilder people, and in telling the story I
hope I have interested the reader.
It is not strange that in the wilderness, where all nature sings,
from the fairy tinkle of the falling snow to the boom of a storm-
swept canyon; and from the warbling of the birds to the roaring
growl of mad grizzlies; and from the whispers of lost breezes to
thunder of thousands of stampeding hoofs--it is not strange that
among all that, even a worn and illiterate old hunter should try
to sing, if nothing more than the same sort of a song that the
dying sachem sings. So I beg you bear with
THE OLD SCOUT'S LAMENT.
Come all of you, my brother scouts,
And join me in my song;
Come, let us sing together,
Though the shadows fall so long.
Of all the old frontiersmen,
That used to scour the plain,
There are but very few of them
That with us yet remain.
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