But there was no other evidence that the sound of the axe, or the voice of man, had ever here disturbed the solitude of nature.

My eyes would have cheated my senses into the belief that I was in an earthly paradise, but my fears told me that I was in a wilderness.
"I pushed along, following the sun, for I had no compass to guide me, and there was no other path than that which my mustang made.

Indeed, if I had found a beaten tract, I should have been almost afraid to have followed it; for my friend the bee-hunter had told me, that once, when he had been lost in the prairies, he had accidentally struck into his own path, and had travelled around and around for a whole day before he discovered his error.

This I thought was a poor way of going ahead; so I determined to make for the first large stream, and follow its course." For several hours Crockett rode through these vast and lonely solitudes, the Eden of nature, without meeting with the slightest trace of a human being.

Evening was approaching, still, calm, and bright.