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° TUE MWUNTERS. 11
erto no act of hostility on vither side had aroused discontent between
the settlers and the savages. / .
It was early in May, about a year after the first settlement
of the whites, when some six or eight of the-stoutest. men _ started
‘for the woods in search of game. A’ bear had been seen on the
brink of the @learing at break of day, and while the greater num-
ber struck off in search of more humbie game, three of the most
resolute followed his trail, which led to the mountains.
The foremost of the three hunters was an Englishman of about for-
ty, habited in a threadbare suit of blue broadcloth, with drab gait.
ers buttoned up to his. knees, and a hat sadly shorn of its original
nap. is hunting apparatus bespoke the peculiar care which all of
his country-so abundantly bestow on their implements of sport.
The other two were much younger, and dressed in home-made cloth,
over: which were loose frocks manufactured from the refuse flax or
_ swingled tow. Both were handsome, but different in the cast of.
their features. The character of the first might be read in his gay
air and. springy step, as he followed close to the Englishman, dash- .
ing away the brushwood with the muzzle of his gun, and detecting
g y g g
with a quick eye the broken twigs or disturbed leaves which betray
ed the course of the hunted bear. ‘Fhere was also something char-
acteristic in the wearing of his dress, in the fox-skin cap thrown
carelessly on one side of his superb: head, exposing a mass of short
brown, curls around the left ear and temple, and in the bosom of his
coarse frock thrown open so as to give free motion to a neck Apollo
might have coveted. He was a hunter, who had occasionally. visited
the settlement of late, but spent whole weeks in the woods, professedly
in collecting furs by his own efforts, or by purchase from. the tribe
of Indians encamped at the foot of the mountains.
The last was more sedate in his looks, and less buoyant in his air.
There was an intellectual expression in his high, thoughtful brow,
embrowned though it was by exposure. A depth of thought in his
serious eye and a graceful dignity in his carriage, bespoke him as.
one of those who hide deep feeling under an appearance of coldness
and apathy. He had been a schoolmaster in. the Bay State, from
whence he had been drawn by the bright eyes and merry laugh
of one Martha Fellows, a maiden of seventeen,, whose father had
moved to the settlement at Catskill the preceding summer, and to
whom, report said, he was to be married whenever a minister, au-
thorized to perform the ceremony, should find his way to the. scttle-
ment. .
The three hunters bent their way in a southwestern direction from
the settlement, till the forest suddenly opened into a beautiful and
secluded piece of meadow-land, known to this day by its Dutch ti-
tle of ‘the Straka,’? which means, our aged friends informed us,
a strip of land. The Straka lay before them of ‘an oblong. form,
some cight or ten acres in expanse, with all its luxuriance of trees,
grass - and flowers, bathed in the dew and sunshine of a summer’s