coast. The common price here is about three dollars per cwt.
Two or three years ago when bear skins were worth from six to ten dollars each, he and another man killed one hundred and thirty-five bears in six weeks.
{118} It may not be improper to mention, that the backwoodsmen, as the first emigrants from the eastward of the Allegheny mountains are called, are very similar in their habits and manners to the aborigines, only perhaps more prodigal and more careless of life. They depend more on hunting than on agriculture, and of course are exposed to all the varieties of climate in the open air. Their cabins are not better than Indian wigwams. They have frequent meetings for the purposes of gambling, fighting and drinking. They make bets to the amount of all they possess. They fight for the most trifling provocations, or even sometimes without any, but merely to try each others prowess, which they are fond of vaunting of. Their hands, teeth, knees, head and feet are their weapons, not only boxing with their fists, (at which they are not to be compared for dexterity, to the lower classes in the seaports of either the United States, or the British islands in Europe) but also tearing, kicking, scratching, biting, gouging each others eyes out by a dexterous use of a thumb and finger, and doing their utmost to kill each other, even when rolling over one another on the ground; which they are permitted to do by the byestanders, without any interference whatever, until one of the parties gives out, on which they are immediately separated, and if the conqueror seems inclined to follow up his victory without granting quarter, he is generally attacked by a fresh man, and a pitched battle between a single pair often ends in a battle royal, where all present are engaged.
A stranger who had kept aloof during a fray of this kind,
