Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/202

186 FREDERICK W. THOMAS, [18;]0-40. original and striking in manners and unrestrained in conduct. He must rank with the first illustrators of manners in the Valley of the Mississippi." E. S. Thomas, the father of Frederick William, died in Cincinnati in 1847. He was the author of "Reminiscenses of the Last Sixty-Five Years;" a work in two volumes, published in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1840, which contains historical and biographical sketches of permanent interest to the people of the West. Lewis F., a brother of Frederick W., is a poet, of whom notice is hereafter taken in tliis work. Martha M., a sister, has written acceptably for many magazines, and is the author of "Life's Lesson," a novel published by Harper and Brothers in 1855. The home of the family is now Cincinnati. One of the brothers, Calvin W., is a well known banker. EXTRACTS FROM •• THE EMIGRANT." THE PIOXEER HUNTERS. Here once Boone trod — the hardy Pio- neer — The only white man in the wilderness : Oh ! how he loved, alone, to hunt the deer. Alone at eve, his simple meal to dress ; No mark upon the tree, nor print, nor track. To lead him forward, or to guide him back : He roved the forest, king by main and might. And looked up to the sky and shaped his course aright. That mountain, there, that lifts its bald, high head Above the forest, was, perchance, his throne ; There has he stood and marked the woods outspread, Like a great kingdom, that was all his own ; In hunting-shirt and moccasins arrayed, With bear-skin cap, and pouch, and need- ful blade, How carelessly he lean'd upon his gun! That scepter of the wild, that had so often won. Those western Pioneers an impulse felt. Which their less hardy sons scarce com- preliend ; Alone, in Nature's wildest scenes they dwelt ; Where crag, and precipice, and torrent blend. And stretched around the wilderness, as rude As the red rovers of its solitude. Who Avatched their coming with a hate profound, And fought with deadly strife for every inch of ground. To shun a greater ill sought they the wild? No, they left happier lands behind them far, And brought the nursing mother and her child To share the dangers of the border war. The log-built cabin from the Indian bjir- red, Their little boy, perchance, kept watch and ward.