kingdoms and empires that have arisen, flourished and fallen, leaving nothing to evince that they ever existed, save the decaying fragments of ruin that lie strewed along the vista of ages, as mournful mementoes of their sad and calamitous dessolation; and it is also the mirror in which we behold the men and manners of every age. A desire for immortality is inherent in the nature of man, and next to this feeling of our nature, is that love of local renown that attaches itself to the place, kingdom or country of our nativity or abode. Hence, nothing is more desirable to man, save his own and his kindred's fame, than the honor and glory of his country. How important is it then to encourage and sustain the graphic pen of the historian! for, it is this alone can perpetuate the renown of a country and give to its inhabitants imperishable fame. While the historian perpetuates the chivalry, science and enterprise of his countrymen, and the moralist enforces the obligations of virtue, the satirist scourges vice from the precincts of refined and enlightened society. It has been the design of the author in the following pages so to combine history, morals and satire, as to perpetuate the virtues and strengthen the morals of his countrymen, while their vicious practices are lashed with an unsparing, but, friendly hand. To improve the manners of the age, inculcate a love of propriety and truth, lend, if possible, an additional lustre to the beauties of virtue, and place (if but a pebble) one stone upon the rising column of his country's fame, is the ardent wish and anxious desire of THE AUTHOR. INTRODUCTION. "AWAKE" gentle reader! "leave all meaner things A wild where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot, Try what the open, what the covert yield; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, ONE hundred years ago the territory that now lies within the geographical limits of the State of Tennessee, was a vast howling wilderness. The rich and fertile valleys where now we behold widespread farms, flowery gardens, verdant meadows and splendid mansions, were then covered with tall and rank cane. The summits of our rugged hills, and the lofty peaks of our towering mountains, waved in majestic grandeur before the summer's breeze, their rich and luxuriant crop of wild peavine and green sedge. Here the bounding buffalo, the light-footed elk and the timid deer, browsed undisturbed, save by the swift-winged, but slender, arrow of the savage huntsman. The owl hooted mournfully in the wild and lonely valley, the wolf howled fiercely upon the mountain-top, the bear roamed undisturbed through the laurel brake, the eagle built her nest in the topmost heights of the craggy cliff; and here the red man of the forest erected his rude, but pious altar, on which to offer incense to the GREAT SPIRIT, whose warning and threatening voice he imagined he heard in the stormy tempest, as it swept with desolating rage through the gigantic forest where stood his humble bark-covered wigwam, and whose awfully glorious, grand and majestic image, with an eye of superstitious fancy, he beheld in the face of the broad and burning luminary of day, as it rolled its brilliant splendors above his savage head, and illumined the dreary and cheerless wilderness around him. Then was this wide-spread territory inhabited alone "By wild beasts of prey, And men more savage still than they;" And all far from the habitation and the haunts of civilized man. Peace, such as savages and wild beasts can have, reigned over the land. But the pale face came, prompted by the rage of speculation, ever active in the bosom of enlightened man; and swift upon his heels followed the bloody strife of war and death. Long and fierce was the deadly struggle; but, finally, the Indian was compelled to yield to the superior skill, prowess and power of the white man. Slowly, and with tearful regret, the red man of the forest retired from the loved land of his nativity, and bid a final adieu to the graves of his ancestors and the bones of his kindred. The storm of war, however, has blown by, the bloody strife is ended, and the wild man of the forest, who had only been partially conquered by the sword, has been completely vanquished by the intrusion of christian feet, overwhelmed by circumstances over which he could exercise no control, and driven from the last spot of his beloved hunting ground, where his fathers chased the buffalo, elk and deer, and slaughtered the bear, to seek a quiet and undisturbed home in the unexplored wilds of the far west: And, behold what a change has passed over the face of the land! "The wilderness where nettles and brambles grew, where the owl and the raven dwelt, and the wild beasts met together, now blossoms as the rose, and the solitary and desolate places are made glad." Where once stood the rude huts of the savage now are seen temples of justice, as well as churches dedicated to the living God, lifting their lofty spires to the clouds; and where the owl hooted, the wolf howled and the savage yelled, the air is now made vocal with hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, poured forth by christians, in adoration of the wise and beneficent ruler of the uni verse. As the red man receded before the encroachments of the pale face, farther, and farther into the depths of the untrodden, but romantic wilderness, the sons of civilization poured with an increasing and accumulating tide over the mountains, from the older States. And as the emigrants came, the brawny limbed, sturdy husband and head of the family, was seen driving his pack-horse before him, his rifle upon his shoulder, his tomahawk and butcher-knife at his side, and followed by a stout, healthy, ruddy cheeked, strong-armed, nimble tongued wife, with a numerous train of greasy-faced, smutty-browed brats, shaking their tattered garments in the wind, and screaming along the way like panthers upon the mountains. When the lord of the family had conducted his command beyond the farthermost verge of the white settlements, (for each emigrant pushed farther and deeper into the wilds of the unexplored forest,) he selected a spot for his dwelling, felled the trees, cut the logs, or rather poles, hauled them with his poney, and with the assistance of his wife erected a cabin, to shelter his family, having no need for buildings in which to store away his household goods. His dwelling house being completed, he next turned his attention to the necessary means for the support of his family, relying alone upon his own keen eye and his sure shooting rifle; for the woods were densely populated with bear, buffalo, elk and deer, and the land teemed with honey, for the wild bees swarmed through the forest as thick as musketoes in the swamps of the Mississippi. His leisure hours were occupied in clearing a patch, and enclosing it within a brush or cane fence, upon which to raise corn for his next summer's bread. When the day's toil was o'er he seated himself in his homely, but peaceful and happy mansion, and regaled his wife and weans with some old-fashioned hunter's song, or, by playing a Virginia, jig upon a gourd fiddle, while his train of tatterly brats kicked up a tremendous dust as they danced over the dirt floor, keeping time to the rich and mellow tones of music, as they rolled beneath the hand of their sire, from this magnificent stringed instrument of his own manufacture. This was life as our territorial ancestors lived, and a merry life it was; and who will dare to say it was not a happy one? But their enjoyments were sometimes suddenly interrupted by the frightful war-whoop of the savage; who, after the lapse of a few years, began to consider these jolly new-comers in no other light than as most rascally intruders upon their rightful domain. People of the present day have become extravagant and effeminate, fond of fine clothes and rich living, welltimed music and delicate women; but our fathers pos |