TALES OF THE BACKWOODS.*

FEW authors have done better service to contemporary German literature than the gentleman whose work we have now under consideration. His chief forte, however, has always been in depicting life in America ; and this has been the necessary result of his most peculiar mode of education. As he tells us himself in his "Travels Round the World" (published by Hurst and Blackett), "he came to America comparatively a youngster, and, as he was unable to speak the language, he was obliged to take any work he could get to make his living, for he felt too proud to write back to Germany for money. He was therefore, first, fireman and deck-hand, then cook on board the Mississippi and Arkansas steamers; set up cord wood in Tennessee, and worked at the silversmith's business in Cincinnati; farmed in Missouri; was bar-keeper, and finally hotel-keeper in Louisiana; stock-keeper awhile in Arkansas; and after having become familiar with the language and habits, hunted four years in the backwoods of Arkansas, principally in the Fourche la Fave and Ozark mountains, and White and St. Francis River swamps, for bears, deer, and turkeys."

men.

In 1849, after his return to Germany, where he had made his début in a literary character by various magazine tales and sketches, he was commissioned by the Frankfort parliament to travel for the purpose of selecting the countries best adapted for German emigration en gros. The result of his travels was of course rendered nugatory by the premature dissolution of the august body at whose charges he was sent out; but we— that is, the reading public-have been so far benefited by them, that they have furnished us with one of the pleasantest books that has appeared this season. The fact speaks for the character of our author, that he, a German, had the courage to write his travels in English, and subjected them to our Aristarchi before presenting them to his own countryHe had, however, no reason to fear any severe criticism, for the freshness of his travels, and the peculiar way in which he regards even the most common-place things, must disarm the most Anglo-bigoted reviewer. A brief notice of his wanderings may not be out of place here. His original intention was to visit South America and California, and thence proceed to Australia, but his own enterprising spirit led him to make various detours. Thus, for instance, he grew tired of the monotony of ship life, and rode with the government correo from Buenos Ayres across the Pampas, and traversed the Andes to Valparaiso, where he arrived, after all his fatigues, just in time to find his ship gone, and all his luggage with it. He then followed in another vessel of the same company to California, where he lived a true miner's life for several months. His roaming disposition then led him to visit the South Sea Islands, of which he gives a vivid description, and adds one more to the list of later authors who have misdoubted the efficacy of missionary propaganda. Thence he proceeded to Sydney, and, after examining the country round, made up his mind to go down the Murray in a canoe to Adelaide. Unfortunately,

Mississippi Bilder, Licht und Schattenseiten transatlantischen Lebens, von Friedrich Gerstäcker. Williams and Norgate.

he suffered shipwreck on the third day, and after parting with his companion, undertook a laborious and dangerous walk of 400 miles through the bush to Adelaide. On his return to Sydney he took ship for Java, and after visiting most of the Dutch settlements started for Bremen once again.

This very slight sketch will show that Mr. Gerstäcker is not of the common run of travellers, who are so fond of deluging the world with their fade impressions, and hide the defects of their production under the convenient cloak of an ad captandum title, alliterative or antithetical. He does not reveal a particle of false pride: he openly confesses that, on many occasions, he had to work, and hardly too, to gain even a subsistence during his rambles; and this is the very fact which has attracted us to him. Such a man necessarily sees much which escapes the traveller blessed with the comforts of life; and we are inclined to believe his statements as to the actual state of countries, before those of others whose only opportunity of judging has been derived from courts and great men. We trust we have said enough to show that Mr. Gerstäcker's views of "life at the gold diggings," which he has largely discussed in his Travels," are well worthy popular attention, at a moment when all the world is busily speculating on the real or apparent value of that very attractive metal.

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The book we have now under consideration by this author contains a series of tales, which he probably heard, or was witness to, during the earlier portion of his adventurous career. We have selected three, which will afford an average sample of our author's style, equally as well as extracts from his "Travels Round the World," of which he has already brought out a translation (?) in Germany.

THE OSAGE.

Far, far to the west of the Missouri, on the borders of the Osage territory, where only a few of the white pioneers, who followed on the heels of the retiring Indians, had raised their block-houses, and hunted and fished, and grew a little maize-just as much as they absolutely required not to be without bread-where the elk still impresses its traces on the moist soil of the river valleys, or traverses the wide and boundless prairie —a white hunter, with his rifle on his shoulder, his knife by his side, in the usual dress of the backwoodsmen, though wearing shoes instead of mocassins, and with a grey, round felt hat on his head, walked cautiously and gently through the dense forest, in which a few clearings allowed a prospect over narrow strips of prairie overgrown with tall

grass.

It was a glorious May morning, though still somewhat cold, but the sun, which already peeped over the tree-tops, was really in earnest, poured its warm beams through the thick foliage of the trees, and dried the dew, which hung in large, heavy drops on the grass.

The hunter had been walking about during the whole morning; but, although he had tracked several stags in the dewy grass, and followed them some distance-although he had seen a couple of splendid buckshe had not got within shot of any, and in vain he looked round attentively, and even crawled rather than walked through the damp foliage;

nothing crossed his path, and in high ill-humour he at length seated himself on a fallen tree to rest, and then continue his walk in the direction of his home, when he heard a shot fired at a considerable distance.

He listened long and attentively, but could not notice anything further, and leaned carelessly against a branch of the tree on which he had been seated, looking out upon a long, narrow strip of prairie, which extended a great distance into the gloomy forest, and was bordered by white-flowered dogwood trees and graceful oaks, that towered high above them.

He had, however, been standing in this position scarce ten minutes, and regarding the pleasant landscape, when, at the spot where the forest seemed to join and enclose the prairie, a stag broke out of the thicket, and ran straight towards him.

He quickly sprang up and made ready to receive his destined victim, which, as it appeared, came unsuspectingly on; but when the buck drew nearer, the hunter's practised eye perceived that it was no longer in the full possession of its strength, but had been already shot; and the slowness of its movements did not result from a feeling of security, but from weakness and exhaustion.

For all this, he kept his rifle fixed upon the buck, and, when it cane within sixty paces of him, fired.

It tottered-stopped-and the next moment fell to the ground. He remained standing quietly on the spot, loaded again, and then walked towards the fallen deer, when he saw an Indian coming through the prairie with another dead deer on his shoulders, and following the traces of the wounded animal at full speed. Not seeming to feel the weight of his burden, he ran up, as soon as he saw the deer lying on the ground, and after throwing the other down, proceeded to strip the animal of its skin, without paying the slightest attention to the white hunter.

"But, my good friend," said the descendant of the Europeans, "it seems a matter of perfect indifference to you who shot the deer, as long as you get the skin? I should fancy that I had some claim to it too, for without my bullet your fingers would hardly have been reddened by the blood of the deer.'

"Look here," said the red son of the forest, pointing to his chest, in which four little wounds, evidently inflicted by slugs, were visible, and without letting himself be in the least stopped in his task; "mine," he then continued, in his broken English, as he struck his own chest with the hilt of his scalping-knife-" I shot first, then the pale face-skin mine, meat pale face's;" and with admirable rapidity he completed the job, while the white man stood by him and seemed to have a strong inclination to teach his wild companion better manners with the butt-end of his rifle or his knife. The latter, however, always kept one eye fixed upon him, and probably suspecting his intention, observed his every motion. He was powerfully built, and the fashion of his paint and the ornaments he wore announced the warrior; while several honourable scars on his chest and shoulders, which could be seen when his blanket slipped off during his occupation, proved him to be no coward.

At length he had finished, drew his blanket again over him, put the skin on his shoulders, and the deer he had first shot upon it, then seized

his fowling-piece, and giving the white man a hurried "Good-by," walked quickly away, and, as it seemed, not in the least troubled by his burden, towards the thicket, in which he disappeared a few moments after.

Half laughing, half angry, the white man looked for a while after him, but then it seemed as if his rage would, for a moment, gain the upper hand; he stamped his foot furiously on the ground, and made a motion to follow the Indian-certainly with no friendly intent-but he probably speedily changed his mind, looked down upon the deer, and then burst into a loud laugh.

"The devil take him!" he at last exclaimed, as he drew his knife from his belt and knelt down by the deer; "I never met with greater impudence in my life-cool blood that perfectly Indian. But confound him, he's left me the meat; and it's very doubtful, in the bargain, whether I should have had that, if the other had not caused him trouble enough."

While he was muttering the last words in his beard, he separated the haunches from the rest of the carcase, then walked to a young hickory, from which he pulled off a strip of bark on which to hang the meat.

"Well," he then continued his self-communing, as he shouldered his rifle, and started in the same direction the Indian had taken, "I've got a piece of meat at least, and shall not go home empty-handed, but uncle will laugh finely at my not bringing the skin. Confound the fellow! I wish I had not let him go so willingly. Well, he'll cross my path again some day, and then he shall pay me for the skin." And with these reflections he walked slowly on towards his uncle's house.

The latter, an old hearty Yankee, who had come from Connecticut to St. Louis about five years before, and had settled so deep in the Far West some ten months previously, had naturally done this from no other cause than to trade with the Indians and buy their skins from them at as cheap a rate as possible, and, on the other hand, dispose of his goods-which they were forced to buy of him, as there was no other store in the vicinity-at as high a price as he could. Still, although he had earned much money by his trading, and cheated the poor ignorant Indians on nearly every occasion, he had attracted them so much by his kind, good-tempered manner (he was, very unlike other Yankees, a little fat man, and all little fat men are good-natured), that they gladly traded with him, and never behaved in a hostile manner to him, not even in their most violent quarrels, which occurred often enough.

He carried on, like all these merchants or, better, pedlars on the Indian frontier, or even in the western settlements, a barter trade, and gave for skins, smoked and sometimes fresh meat, for furs and tanned hides, for bearfat and honey, those goods which the Indians required, as powder and shot, blankets, ironware (tomahawks and knives), rifles, glass beads, &c.; his chief trade, however, consisted in the forbidden whisky, which he sold the dearer to the Indians because they knew that the laws of his great chief forbade him from either giving or selling "liquid fire" to them. For this reason he also kept the casks hidden beneath his house, although in this remote part of the state he had little cause to apprehend any domiciliary visit.

The old man was sitting before the door of his little storehouse, and

smoking comfortably while watching a flock of black turkeys (reared from the eggs of the wild birds), which were picking up the scattered corn and grain around him, when the Indian we have already introduced to the reader came walking along the footpath that led direct from his house to the forest, and, drawing a deep breath, threw his burden down at the Yankee's feet.

savage,

Hallo, Tom!" the latter cried, as he held out his hand to the "you've got a famous load. Well, what have you brought? Two skins and a piece of raw meat. Pooh! is that all you've got?"

"Good; suppose you go-take a gun-crawl through bushes-creep on your stomach through the prairie a long, long way-find a stag-suppose-you shoot nothing," Tom replied.

Very possible," the old man said, with a laugh.

"I should look well too if I went creeping about on my stomach on the wet grass. No, no; I never was a sportsman, and the only large game I ever shot was one of my brother-in-law's cows at St. Louis, when we went out' panfiring' one evening."

The Indian laughed loudly.

"Your brother-in-law must have been very pleased,” he then continued, after a short pause, serious tone.

in a very

"Yes; he swore I should never touch a rifle again as long as I was in the neighbourhood of his cows and pigs. Well, I was satisfied with that. But, Tom, what has brought you here? what do you want for the skins? shall I keep the meat as well?"

"Good fat buck," said Tom, turning the deer over, so that the old man could see its broad back; "not so broad as you," he continued, with a grin.

"Well then, come, carry it into the store, then I'll give you what you want for it," the Yankee replied, and walked before him into the little building, while the Indian leaned his gun against the outer wall, and followed him in.

When they arrived there, he laid his burden upon the counter, and then began looking, among the goods, which hung up for sale all round, as if in search of something.

"Well, Tom, what will you have this morning?" the old man at last asked him; "out with it."

"A little powder, a little shot, a little knife, a little tobacco, and plenty of whisky," said Tom.

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Whisky! fie, Tom," the former rebuked him. "You know I dare not sell whisky, and would not expose myself to risk on that account for all the red skins who wander through Missouri; Tom, you were only wanting to try me."

"I a good Indian," Tom assured him, laying his hand on his chest"I a very good Indian-love white man-do anything for white man— go to church-I a very good Indian.”

"But

you know,"

," the dealer contradicted him, "that no good Indian touches whisky; that they despise it, and only the bad and worthless drink fire-water."

"I no good Indian-I a very bad blackguard," Tom rejoined, most seriously.

"Oh! if that's the case," the old man said, with a loud laugh, "I