Priscian a little scratch\'d;
                 \'Twill serve.
                                           —Love\'s Labour Lost.

Having made the reader acquainted with the manner in which Ishmael Bush had disposed of his family, under circumstances that might have proved so embarrassing to most other men, we shall again shift the scene a few short miles from the place last described, preserving, however, the due and natural succession of time. At the very moment that the squatter and his sons departed in the manner mentioned in the preceding chapter, two men were intently occupied in a swale that lay along the borders of a little run, just out of cannon-shot from the encampment, discussing the merits of a savoury bison\'s hump, that had been prepared for their palates with the utmost attention to the particular merits of that description of food. The choice morsel had been judiciously separated from the adjoining and less worthy parts of the beast, and, enveloped in the hairy coating provided by nature, it had duly undergone the heat of the customary subterraneous oven, and was now laid before its proprietors in all the culinary glory of the prairies. So far as richness, delicacy, and wildness of flavour, and substantial nourishment were concerned, the viand might well have claimed a decided superiority over the meretricious cookery and laboured compounds of the most renowned artist; though the service of the dainty was certainly achieved in a manner far from artificial. It would appear that the two fortunate mortals, to whose happy lot it fell to enjoy a meal in which health and appetite lent so keen a relish to the exquisite food of the American deserts, were far from being insensible of the advantage they possessed.

The one, to whose knowledge in the culinary art the other was indebted for his banquet, seemed the least disposed of the two to profit by his own skill. He ate, it is true, and with a relish; but it was always with the moderation with which age is apt to temper the appetite. No such restraint, however, was imposed on the inclination of his companion. In the very flower of his days and in the vigour of manhood, the homage that he paid to the work of his more aged friend\'s hands was of the most profound and engrossing character. As one delicious morsel succeeded another he rolled his eyes towards his companion, and seemed to express that gratitude which he had not speech to utter, in looks of the most benignant nature.

“Cut more into the heart of it, lad,” said the trapper, for it was the venerable inhabitant of those vast wastes, who had served the bee-hunter with the banquet in question; “cut more into the centre of the piece; there you will find the genuine riches of natur\'; and that without need from spices, or any of your biting mustard to give it a foreign relish.”

“If I had but a cup of metheglin,” said Paul, stopping to perform the necessary operation of breathing, “I should swear this was the strongest meal that was ever placed before the mouth of man!”

“Ay, ay, well you may call it strong!” returned the other, laughing after his peculiar manner, in pure satisfaction at witnessing the infinite contentment of his companion; “strong it is, and strong it makes him who eats it! Here, Hector,” tossing the patient hound, who was watching his eye with a wistful look, a portion of the meat, “you have need of strength, my friend, in your old days as well as your master. Now, lad, there is a dog that has eaten and slept wiser and better, ay, and that of richer food, than any king of them all! and why? because he has used and not abused the gifts of his Maker. He was made a hound, and like a hound has he feasted. Then did He create men; but they have eaten like famished wolves! A good and prudent dog has Hector proved, and never have I found one of his breed false in nose or friendship. Do you know the difference between the cookery of the wilderness and that which is found in the settlements? No; I see plainly you don\'t, by your appetite; then I will tell you. The one follows man, the other natur\'. One thinks he can add to the gifts of the Creator, while the other is humble enough to enjoy them; therein lies the secret.”

“I tell you, trapper,” said Paul, who was very little edified by the morality with which his associate saw fit to season their repast, “that, every day while we are in this place, and they are likely to be many, I will shoot a buffaloe and you shall cook his hump!”

“I cannot say that, I cannot say that. The beast is good, take him in what part you will, and it was to be food for man that he was fashioned; but I cannot say that I will be a witness and a helper to the waste of killing one daily.”

“The devil a bit of waste shall there be, old man. If they all turn out as good as this, I will engage to eat them clean myself, even to the hoofs;—how now, who comes here! some one with a long nose, I will answer; and one that has led him on a true scent, if he is following the trail of a dinner.”

The individual who interrupted the conversation, and who had elicited the foregoing remark of Paul, was seen advancing along the margin of the run with a deliberate pace, in a direct line for the two revellers. As there was nothing formidable nor hostile in his appearance, the bee-hunter, instead of suspending his operations, rather increased his efforts, in a manner which would seem to imply that he doubted whether the hump would suffice for the proper entertainment of all who were now likely to partake of the delicious morsel. With the trapper, however, the case was different. His more tempered appetite was already satisfied, and he faced the new comer with a look of cordiality, that plainly evinced how very opportune he considered his arrival.

“Come on, friend,” he said, waving his hand, as he observed the stranger to pause a moment, apparently in doubt. “Come on, I say, if hunger be your guide, it has led you to a fitting place. Here is meat, and this youth can give you corn, parch\'d till it be whiter than the upland snow; come on, without fear. We are not ravenous beasts, eating of each other, but Christian men, receiving thankfully that which the Lord hath seen fit to give.”

“Venerable hunter,” returned the Doctor, for it was no other than the naturalist on one of his daily exploring expeditions, “I rejoice greatly at this happy meeting; we are lovers of the same pursuits, and should be friends.”

“Lord, Lord!” said the old man, laughing, without much deference to the rules of decorum, in the philosopher\'s very face, “it is the man who wanted to make me believe that a name could change the natur\' of a beast! Come, friend; you are welcome, though your notions are a little blinded with reading too many books. Sit ye down, and, after eating of this morsel, tell me, if you can, the name of the creatur\' that has bestowed on you its flesh for a meal?”

The eyes of Doctor Battius (for we deem it decorous to give the good man the appellation he most preferred) sufficiently denoted the satisfaction with which he listened to this proposal. The exercise he had taken, and the sharpness of the wind, proved excellent stimulants; and Paul himself had hardly been in better plight to do credit to the trapper\'s cookery, than was the lover of nature, when the grateful invitation met his ears. Indulging in a small laugh, which his exertions to repress reduced nearly to a simper, he took the indicated seat by the old man\'s side, and made the customary dispositions to commence his meal without further ceremony.

“I should be ashamed of my profession,” he said, swallowing a morsel of the hump with evident delight, slily endeavouring at the same time to distinguish the peculiarities of the singed and defaced skin, “I ought to be ashamed of my profession, were there beast, or bird, on the continent of America, that I could not tell by some one of the many evidences which science has enlisted in her cause. This—then—the food is nutritious and savoury—a mouthful of your corn, friend, if you please?”

Paul, who continued eating with increasing industry, looking askaunt not unlike a dog when engaged in the same agreeable pursuit, threw him his pouch, without deeming it at all necessary to suspend his own labours.

“You were saying, friend, that you have many ways of telling the creatur\'?”—observed the attentive trapper.

“Many; many and infallible. Now, the animals that are carnivorous are known by their incisores.”

“Their what?” demanded the trapper.

“The teeth with which nature has furnished them for defence, and in order to tear their food. Again—”

“Look you then for the teeth of this creatur\',” interrupted the trapper, who was bent on convincing a man who had presumed to enter into competition with himself, in matters pertaining to the wilds, of gross ignorance; “turn the piece round and find your inside-overs.”

The Doctor complied, and of course without success; though he profited by the occasion to take another fruitless glance at the wrinkled hide.

“Well, friend, do you find the things you need, before you can pronounce the creatur\' a duck or a salmon?”

“I apprehend the entire animal is not here?”

“You may well say as much,” cried Paul, who was now compelled to pause from pure repletion; “I will answer for some pounds of the fellow, weighed by the truest steel-yards west of the Alleghanies. Still you may make out to keep soul and body together, with what is left,” reluctantly eyeing a piece large enough to feed twenty men, but which he felt compelled to abandon from satiety; “cut in nigher to the heart, as the old man says, and you will find the riches of the piece.”

“The heart!” exclaimed the Doctor, inwardly delighted to learn there was a distinct organ to be submitted to his inspection. “Ay, let me see the heart—it will at once determine the character of the animal—certes this is not the cor—ay, sure enough it is—the animal must be of the order belluae, from its obese habits!”

He was interrupted by a long and hearty, but still a noiseless fit of merriment, from the trapper, which was considered so ill-timed by the offended naturalist, as to produce an instant cessation of speech, if not a stagnation of ideas.

“Listen to his beasts\' habits and belly orders,” said the old man, delighted with the evident embarrassment of his rival; “and then he says it is not the core! Why, man, you are farther from the truth than you are from the settlements, with all your bookish larning and hard words; which I have, once for all, said cannot be understood by any tribe or nation east of the Rocky Mountains. Beastly habits or no beastly habits, the creatur\'s are to be seen cropping the prairies by tens of thousands, and the piece in your hand is the core of as juicy a buffaloe-hump as stomach need crave!”

“My aged companion,” said Obed, struggling to keep down a rising irascibility, that he conceived would ill comport with the dignity of his character, “your system is erroneous, from the premises to the conclusion; and your classification so faulty, as utterly to confound the distinctions of science. The buffaloe is not gifted with a hump at all; nor is his flesh savoury and wholesome, as I must acknowledge it would seem the subject before us may well be characterised—”

“There I\'m dead against you, and clearly with the trapper,” interrupted Paul Hover. “The man who denies that buffaloe beef is good, should scorn to eat it!”[*]

    [*] It is scarcely necessary to tell the reader, that the animal so
    often alluded to in this book, and which is vulgarly called the
    buffaloe, is in truth the bison; hence so many contretemps
    between the men of the prairies and the men of science.

The Doctor, whose observation of the bee-hunter had hitherto been exceedingly cursory, stared at the new speaker with a look which denoted something like recognition.

“The principal characteristics of your countenance, friend,” he said, “are familiar; either you, or some other specimen of your class, is known to me.”

“I am the man you met in the woods east of the big river, and whom you tried to persuade to line a yellow hornet to his nest: as if my eye was not too true to mistake any other animal for a honey-bee, in a clear day! We tarried together a week, as you may remember; you at your toads and lizards, and I at my high-holes and hollow trees: and a good job we made of it between us! I filled my tubs with the sweetest honey I ever sent to the settlements, besides housing a dozen hives; and your bag was near bursting with a crawling museum. I never was bold enough to put the question to your face, stranger, but I reckon you are a keeper of curiosities?”[*]

    [*] The pursuit of a bee-hunter is not uncommon, on the skirts of
    American society, though it is a little embellished here. When the
    bees are seen sucking the flowers, their pursuer contrives to
    capture one or two. He then chooses a proper spot, and suffering
    one to escape, the insect invariably takes its flight towards the
    hive. Changing his ground to a greater or less distance according
    to circumstances, the bee-hunter then permits another to escape.
    Having watched the cours............