With Axe and Rifle

by William Henry Giles Kingston

“Of what wonder do you speak?” asked my father.

“Sure, of the big caves we have deep down in the earth, a few miles only from this. It is said there are mountains, rivers and lakes within them, and I don’t know what besides.”

“Oceans, forests, and valleys, perhaps,” said my father, laughing, and scarcely crediting the account my uncle gave him; for at that time the wonderful Mammoth Caves of Kentucky were unknown to the world in general, although the native Indians might have been acquainted with them, and some time before, a mine of saltpetre at the entrance had been discovered. My mother, more to please Uncle Denis than from any expected pleasure to herself; agreed to accompany him, and to my great delight, they promised to take me.

We were to perform the trip in two or three days, and Uncle Denis said that in the meantime he would try and find means of amusing us. We went all over the farm, on which he grew tobacco, maize, and other cereals. He was a great sportsman, besides which he had a fancy for trapping birds and animals, and taming them, when he could. In this he was wonderfully successful; he had a large menagerie of the feathered tribe as well as numbers of four-footed beasts which he had trapped and contrived to domesticate. His ambition was to tame a panther, a bear, and a wolf; but as yet he had not succeeded in taking any of them young enough, as he said, to be taught good manners.

“Perhaps if you had a lady to help you, you would be more successful,” observed my mother, “like Orpheus of old, who charmed the savage beasts. She would with her voice produce a greater effect on their wild natures than any man can do.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Uncle Denis, looking up and laughing.

My mother’s great wish was to see Uncle Denis married happily, though where to find a wife to suit him, or, as she would have said, “good enough for him,” was the difficulty. There were no lack of excellent girls in Kentucky, daughters of settlers, but they could seldom boast of much education or refinement of manners, and Uncle Denis was a gentleman in every sense of the word; at the same time that he had as much spirit and daring as any Kentuckian born.

It must be understood of course, that at the time I speak of, I was too young to understand these matters, but I heard of them afterwards from my mother, and am thus able to introduce them in their proper place in my history.

Uncle Denis took great delight in showing us his various traps and snares, as well as other means he employed for capturing birds or animals.

The traps had been greatly neglected during his illness. I remember being especially delighted with what he called his “pens,” which he had erected for the capture of wild turkeys, with which the neighbouring woods abounded. The two first we came to contained birds lately caught; the third was empty, and the fourth had been broken into by a hungry wolf, which had carried off the captive.