would be foolish in itself, and injurious in its effects. Why are the people of Loo-Choo unique? Because their situation in the aggregate is the same. But all this is Arabic to Captain Hall. As well may a traveller expect to find a similar state of things in Switzerland and France, as in Great Britain and the United States. Although descended chiefly from the people of Great Britain, the inhabitants of the United States are not bound to imitate them, any more than the people of other nations. Nor will they imitate them, except so far as may comport with reason, and suit their own interests. Nor will any man of sense expect such imitation.

To conclude. As far as it may have influence, Captain Hall's book is calculated to do mischief, by deceiving one nation, and irritating another. It will, moreover, confer on him somewhat of the reputation which the setting fire to the temple of Minerva did on the incendiary who had not the capacity to perpetuate his name by a better deed. In a particular manner, it must necessarily prevent, in future, English tourists from receiving, in the United States, the attentions, hospitalities, and facilities, which its author experienced, and so flagrantly abused. The best security against its bad effects, is to be found in its own silliness and want of probability, and in the good sense of the British and American people.

C.

Par Nobile Fratum.

We have taken infinite pains, and some of our friends annoint us, by saying not without effect, to draw from obscurity the worthy and the notorious of the West We asked no more, than the humble and common meed of fame, gratitude and money. The western people have shown themselves unaccountably indolent and indifferent to these, our reasonable expectations. N'importe. We shall walk with a more erect front, feeling that henceforward no morcenary touch of motive will pollute our efforts. We shall for the future fight gratuitously for the honor of the western flag, and shall boast honorable scars, unsalved by money, patronage or pension.

[From the Missouri Intelligencer, Nov. 1829.J

The history of Mike Shuck, was originally published in the Missouri Intelligencer, in 1822. Presuming that many at a distance, as well as in our immediate vicinity, would be gratified in seeing it, we now re-publish it.

MIKE SHUCK.

There appears in the character of the inhabitants who reside immediately on a frontier, certain doubtful features that render it difficult to determine to what side of the boundary they belong. Thus it is with our borderers of Missouri, who have taken up their residence in the neighborhood of the Indian lands, and in many instances have adopted the habits, manners and costume of the natives.

Michael Shuckwell, or, as he has been more familiarly denominated, Mike Shuck, may be presented as a sample of those voluntary Barbarians. Amongst the early settlers of Kentucky, Mike Shuck was known a white-headed hardy urchin, whom nobody claimed kin to, and who disclaimed connexion with all mankind.

He was inured to danger in the course of the Indian wars of that period; and when the celebrated Colonel Boon migrated to this country, Mike was one of his numerous followers. Advancing as the settlements progressed, for the convenience of hunting, he has at last found himself pushed beyond the boundary of that tract of country to which the Indian title has been extinguished. At present Mike Shuck claims a portable citizenship, or a floating title to a residence that he locates for the time being, wherever he may chance to lay himself down for the night, His subsistence he draws from nature's grand storehouse, by means of an old rusty rifle, that has been his constant companion since his first campaign under Gen. George Rogers Clark.

He possesses, in an eminent degree, a knowledge of all the minutia of trapping, and he appropriates his autumns, the proper season for this branch of his business, in exploring the small creeks that put into the Missouri above the settlements. He is frequently discovered "at the peep of dawn," bare-headed and bare-footed, pursuing the meanderings of these water-courses, bending under a load of traps, to learn whether or not his bait has attracted the cautious victim; or for the purpose of locating his traps more advantageously.

Such is the accuracy of his skill, that Mike Shuck can make up a pack of beaver, where an Indian, with all his rude knowledge of natural history, would esteem the prospect hopeless. A gentleman who was in the pursuit of elk, about the middle of November last, discovered this modern Crusoe at evening, laden with his effects, that by great good fortune at this time amounted to about a pack horse load, He proposed to encamp with him for the night.-Mike muttered a kind of a grumbling assent, and led the way, first through an extensive hazle thicket, thence descending into a ravine, he proceeded by a devious route through a compact grove of swamp-ash, and at length arrived at a cheerful fire that had previously been lighted up by our hero; but for which the place would have been as dreary as purgatory. The owls themselves, however pressing their necessities, could scarcely have flapped their way into this dismal labyrinth. But Mike and his plunder, as he very properly termed it in this instance, (for it was the legitimate property of the Indians) was safe. Mike Shuck threw down his burden, and turned to his follower with a malicious smile, or rather a hysteric grin, and desired him to be seated. The hospitality of his board, if a bear skin spread on the ground deserves the name, was tendered with very little ceremony, and consisted of a beaver tail and an elk marrow bone, both of which were prepared on the coals by mine host in his own proper person.

Mike, as I have before remarked, claims no family connexions; and if he ever had any, he has outlived them: he is therefore making no provis ions for legacy hunters.-But he is always, when he deigns to make use of his tongue, grumbling about his arrangements for an easy, independ ent old age, and speaks of it as if it was very far distant, although he has Vol. III. No. 7.

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attained almost four score. When the trapping season is over, he betakes himself to his craft, as he is pleased to term a cotton wood canoe, and proceeds to market with his usual indifference towards the elements. On one occasion, when his cargo was fairly afloat on the angry current of the Missouri, and Mike had extended his weather worn limbs upon the shore for repose, his bow-fast (a grape vine) parted, and his frail bark put to sea without a pilot. On making this discovery in the morning, he was chagrined, but not discouraged by the event. He lost no time, but instantly set off in pursuit of his fortune, and having coasted-down the river, on the third day discovered his craft self-moored under the lee of a raft of drift wood, without having sustained the smallest injury in hull, rigging or cargo. Michael was so much rejoiced, that, by inspiration or instinct, he was induced to offer a hasty prayer of thanksgiving; but whether it was directed to God, man or the Devil, I have not been informed. As old Michael disdains to decorate his pericranium with the beaver he may entrap, his hair has been suffered to grow into a matted gristly substance, and at present very much resembles the borrowed wig of a strolling player. His features too are worn by time and the storms of nearly eighty winters, into the inflexibility of a barber's block. With all these evidences to the contrary, he professes to be exceedingly happy. He insists that he relishes his meals infinitely better than a professed epicure; and he contends that Madeira can by no means bear a comparison with spring water.

I do not envy him his happiness, nor would I recommend copying his pursuits, yet I believe most religiously that such a life of active exertion, by giving to the blood a vigorous circulation, will ensure health and cheerfulness to the spirits, while an inert, sedentary life, will be fruitful only in blue-devils.

COL. PLUG.

A northerner resident in the West sometimes feels his pride wounded, as he finds so few of the first famous 'residenters' to have been born north of the Hudson. I take pleasure in having it in my power, to redeern one memorable exception from oblivion. Traits of the horse, alligator and snapping turtle are not exclusively western instincts, as I will make appear.

Col. Fluger was born in the county of Rockingham, in New Hampshire, and in a town, where they still call a kitchen a scullery. He had a slight at cards, and a knowing instinct in relation to watches and horses, almost from his babyhood. The boy, who wanted to be unburdened of his coppers, had only to play hustle,' or 'pitch-penny" with him. He was supposed to have a reverend dread of mortal hurts, but could 'lick' any boy of his size at fourteen. Being a youth of broad red cheeks, muscle and impudence, and withal, abundantly stored with small talk, from eighteen to twenty-one he was a decided favorite with the fair, and had had various love affairs, being reputed remarkably slippery in regard to the grace of perseverance. At twenty-four he had mounted epaulettes, was a

militia colonel, had a portentous red nose, and was in bad odour with all honest people. Soon afterwards, he went under lock and key for want of some one who would bail him for twenty dollars. The colonel, on his release, in a huff of unrequited patriotism, discovered, that the people had no taste of merit; and incontinently in his wrath abandoned his country, setting his face towards the western woods, which had just began to be a subject of discussion.

Little is remembered of him on the upper waters of the Ohio; though it appears, that he attempted to 'lick' the contractor, who built a flat boat for him at Pittsburgh, because he insisted upon paying the man in rum, and other yankee notions, among which was a promissory slip of paper. Col. Fluger was soon made out to be remarkably cute,' even to a fault; and the people of that sharp dealing town were not unwilling to wash their hands of one, to whom it was both more agreeable, and more familiar, to bite, than be bitten.

Flat boats had begun to descend the Ohio to New Orleans in considerable numbers. But from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, was, for the most part, a vast, unpeopled wilderness. At Fort Massac, and thence to the Mississippi, on the north shore of the river, harbored a gang of those detestable villains, whose exploits were of such terrible notoriety in the early history of the navigation of this beautiful river. Numerous Kentucky broad-horns, generally with whiskey and provisions, and sometimes with cutlery and piece goods, were seen floating down the forests. They were manned by an unique people, tall, athletic, reckless, addicted to strange curses, and little afraid of thunder. Withal they loved a reasonable dram, were fond of playing cards, and were easily parted from their money. These honest fellows were the fowls, that the rogues of Massac and Cash delighted to pluck. They would entice the broad horns to land, and play cards with the crew, and cheat them under the cotton wood shade. They would pilot their boats into a difficult place, or give them such directions from the shore, as would be sure to run them on a snag. Failing that, they would creep, like weasels, into the boats by night, while they were tied up to the willows, and bore a hole, or dig out the caulking in the bottom. When the crew found their boat sinking, these benevolent Cash boys were busily at hand, with their periogues and crafts, to save the floating barrels and boxes. Rightly they named it 'plunder' in Kentucky parlance; for they rowed the saved goods up the Cash, and in the deep swamps next day no trace of them was to be seen. If one or two of the crew chanced to straggle away in pursuit of their lost cargo, they scrupled not to knock them in the head, shoot, or dirk them, and give them a nameless grave in the morasses. A volume of narratives of these boatwrecking scoundrels might be collected. Nor will you ever float by Fort Massac, the House of Nature, or the mouth of Cash, with an old residenter for a companion, without hearing hair-bristling stories of the knavery, cruelty and murders of the villains of Cash.

Col. Fluger floated to these wretches by the attraction of like to like. The faded scarlet and the tarnished yellow of his epaulettes, his red nose, his 'cuteness,' his strange curses, his utter recklessness stood him instead of initiatory grips.' He was one of them forthwith, in honor and trust; and in a month he was the Napoleon of the desperadoes of Cash. His

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slang-curses were ultra Kentuckian on a ground of yankee; and he had, says my informant, more of this, 'than you could shake a stick at.' The fund of his real fighting courage was questionable; but he was improving in that line; and for cunning and cruelty was an incarnate devil. Finding, that in that commonwealth, titles were not only not in demand, but matter of envy, he doffed his. To fall in with the laconic and forcible stile of his troop, who came over all appellatives by the shortest, he cut down his family name to Plug. Being, says my informant, of a delicate ear, and rich in Booktionary lore, he undoubtedly thus condensed the name for its euphonic compactness. For night and secret work Plug had a fleet of Bucksnatchers with chosen crews, to row up and down the river. Not a warehouse between Louisville and Cash had a lock, for which this gang had not a model key. The enormous bunch of black and rusty keys, shown at Dorfeuille's Museum, as having been found in the Ohio, near the House of Nature, undoubtedly belonged to the banditti of Col. Plug. We have no doubt, that they will hereafter be viewed with suita. ble reverence, as an antique relic of no mean mystery and importance.

Plug had his episode of love and marriage on this wise. A periogue load of French and Spanish traders were descending from St. Louis to New Madrid, where they resided. They landed on the point, nearly opposite the mouth of Cash, whether for hunting or divertisement, or for what object does not appear. Plug, like his prototype, was roaming up and down, and to and fro at the head of his gang. They came upon the camp-fire of the traders, as they had dined, drank their whiskey, and were taking their pipes, and reclining in the shade in paradisaical reverie. These meek citizens cared as little to see Plug, as him of the deep sulphur domicile. They cleared out in their periogue in a twinkling. A damsel of their number had wandered away some distance to gather pawpaws. The party intercepted, and made her prisoner. They found her a giantess in size, of varnished copper complexion, and evidently bearing the blood of at least three races mixed in her veins. But, though deserted by her friends, she neither wept, made verses, or betrayed fear, or surprise, not she. A real cosmopolite,

Her march was o'er the fallen logs,

Her home the forest shade.

Her dialect was as fair a compound as Plug's, though not very intelligible to him, being composed, in nearly equal proportions, of south of Europe, Negro and Indian. But love has its own language. She and the Colonel saw, loved, and mutually conquered. The subordinates might envy; but who would contest the claims of Plug to the fair one? The sex and the relation of the quarteroon to her husband were designated by the same tact, which cut down Fluger to Plug. She was thereafter known by the name Pluggy.

Five miles up the Cash, on the verge of a vast swamp, surrounded by deep cane brakes, and inextricable tangle, was the log bower of the Arcadians. Some millions of unemployed musquetoes kept garrison in the swamp. Bears, wolves and panthers were no strangers there; and moccasin snakes renewed their vernal skins at their leisure. But the inmates, as the Kentucky orator said, 'in this sublime state of retiracy among the