With Axe and Rifle | Page 9

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.
"There is another I built the day before I was taken ill, further away in the forest. No one but myself knows of it," observed Uncle Denis; "we'll pay a visit to it, though I am much afraid if a bird has been caught, it must have starved to death by this time."
The pens Uncle Denis was speaking of were simple structures formed like a huge cage by poles stuck in the ground sufficiently close together to prevent a bird from getting out. They were roofed over by boughs and leaves, and were without doors or windows. It will then be asked, how can a bird get in? The trap is entered in this way.
A passage or trench is cut in the ground twelve or fourteen feet in length, passing under the wall of the hut and rising again in its centre. Inside the wall and over the trench, a bridge is thrown. To induce the bird to enter, grain is strewn along the trench and scattered about its neighbourhood, while a larger quantity is placed on the floor inside the hut. The unwary turkey, on seeing the grains of corn, picks them up, and not suspecting treachery follows the train until it finds itself inside the pen; instead however of endeavouring to escape by the way it entered, it, like other wild birds, runs round and round the walls of the hut, peeping through the interstices and endeavouring to force its way out, each time crossing over the bridge without attempting to escape by the only practicable outlet. In this way Uncle Denis said that he had caught numbers of birds, one and all having acted in the same foolish manner.
"Hereabouts is my forest pen," he said. "Hark! I hear some curious clucking sounds. There's more than one bird there, or I am much mistaken." Stepping forward he peered over the branches, when he beckoned us to advance, and, he lifting me in his arms, I saw not only a hen turkey in the pen, but a brood of a dozen or more turkey poults running in and out among the bars, while the hen was evidently calling to them, suspecting that danger was near.
They were too young to fly up into the trees, which they do on being alarmed, when scarcely more than a fortnight old. Uncle Denis was highly pleased.
"I shall have a fine addition to the poultry-yard," he said, "for I shall tame all these young ones by cutting their wings, and they will not be able to follow their mother into the woods, so for their sake she will probably be content to share their captivity."
Peter, a black boy, had accompanied us, and Uncle Denis sent him back for a couple of baskets. The turkey hen, though much alarmed, having gathered her poults under her wings, stood ready to defend them bravely. Uncle Denis said that