ten families soon moved in, began their clearings, built their log houses, planted their first crops, and commenced in earnest the life of pioneers in the wilderness. Saw-mills were soon built, various improvements were made, and in a few years more than a thousand acres were cleared and fenced off into farms and gardens. A schoolhouse was built, and a little school of more than sixty scholars gathered in. Within ten years after the first clearing was made some seventy-five settlers were trying their fortunes at Number Four. But it is the old be tamed by man. The soil was none of the best; the climate was cold, the summers were short, and the winters were long; the markets were distant, and the roads to them through the forest were almost impassible during much of the year. One by one the settlers, growing weary of the undertaking, sold out their improvements or abandoned them, and with their families left the forest hamlet, to seek other homes, until within twenty-five years after the first house was built, only three families were left at Number Four. These three remaining families were those of Isaac Wetmore, Chauncey Smith and Orrin Fenton. Chauncey Smith has long been a famous hunter and trapper, and is still living there at an advanced age. Isaac Wetmore died there in 1853, and was buried in the little burial place now overgrown with bushes and brambles near his former home. And now the old dwellings, with two or three exceptions, have all disappeared, the schoolhouse and its children are no longer to be seen there. The fences are gone, and the once cleared fields are fast reverting to their original forest sad story of the wilderness that will not state. II. No one of the many settlers of Number Four became so identified with its history as Orrin Fenton. Fenton moved to Number Four with his family in the year 1826, and lived there nearly forty years. For many years Fenton's house became, from necessity, there being few other accommodations, a forest hostelry, open for the entertainment of the hunters and pleasure seekers who so often visited the region. Many a tired and half famished traveller remembers with gratitude how, after a day's tramp in the woods, he received the kindly attentions of Fenton's welcome fireside, presided over so gracefully by his busy wife. Should this page meet the eye of any who visited "Fenton's" in days gone by, many a pleasing reminiscence will be called up, and many a savory repast of delicious trout and venison, cooked and served as no one but Mrs. Fenton could cook and serve them, will be remembered. But Fenton at length, like the other settlers at Number Four, sold out his forest home and reluctantly left it to reside there no more. The person to whom he sold it, however, kept the place but a few years, and now it is owned by Mr. Fenton's son Charles, who, as his father did, now keeps there a famous forest hostelry, overlooking Beaver Lake in its wild enchanting beauty. "Fenton-who shall or can," says W. Hudson Stephens in his Historical Notes, "chronicle the experiences of his heart-life of forty years in the wilderness. In the memory of how many a laborer and wanderer is his cheerful, tidy home treasured, and the kindly attention of his forest resort recalled with grateful recollections. Amid such scenes of wild beauty the genius of a Wordsworth was roused into active utterance of the melody of 'a heart grown holier as it traced the beauty of the world below.' The silence and solitude of the northern forest has had its charms for him. Who will say his heart's earlier aspirations have not been as effectually satisfied in the solitudes of the uncultivated forest as if he had moved amid the busy haunts of the crowded city? This sportsman by land and stream, this forest farmer, looks back upon woodland scene and experience with sighs. How true that while hope writes the poetry of the boy, memory writes that of the man," CHAPTER XXIV. JAMES O'KANE. O Solitude, romantic maid! Whether by nodding towers you tread, Or climb the Andes' clifted side, On the Beaver River, in the depths of the forest, twelve miles above Number Four, is a hunter's shantying ground, long known as Stillwater, but sometimes now called Wardwell's. The first occupant of this old hunting station was David Smith, afterward known as the hermit of Smith's Lake, many miles further up the river. The first ten years of Smith's hermit life were passed in this spot, but the early fishing parties coming in, disturbed his seclusion, and he went further up the river, where he could find a still deeper solitude. Ten years or more after Smith left Stillwater, about the year 1844, another hermit of the woods took up his abode there, named James, or as he was always familiarly called Jimmy O'Kane. For twelve years his shanty stood on the banks of Twitchell Creek, a confluent of the Beaver River at Stillwater, near the old Champlain road that leads from Number Four past Raquette Lake. In solitude and alone lived Jimmy all these weary years amid the dreary scene. Jimmy lived mostly by hunting and fishing, but as he grew old and feeble he was too clumsy a hunter to take many deer, although they were numerous on his hunting-ground, and so he depended mostly on smaller game and fish. His method of preserving game and laying in supplies was a model one, in its way, for convenience and economy. He kept in his shanty what he called his "poultry barrel." In this he salted down indiscriminately all the small animals and birds he could catch. In times of scarcity his poultry barrel was his never-failing resource. He was, however, generally well supplied with better food, and was always hospitably inclined to all the passing hunters. Why Jimmy thus absented himself from "the haunts and the converse of men" and voluntarily chose this mode of life, still remains a mystery. Whether he became disgusted with the trials and vexations always incident to this poor life of ours, with the perfidy of man or the frailty of woman, or whether he sought in the retirement and seclusion of the wilderness the opportunity for that meditation on things spiritual and eternal which he deemed necessary for his soul's repose, or whether he was an ardent student of nature, and loved to gaze upon the brightness of silver waters, the loveliness of the wild flower, or upon the grandeur of forest scenery, rocks, hills, mountains, lakes and streams stretching afar off from his solitary home, or whether the sports of the chase were his only solace, must be left to the conjecture of the curious observer of the changing vagaries of the human heart. A worn copy of "The Gospels" and a work on the "Piscatory Art" constituted his scanty library. His only constant companions were his dog and gun. He was the owner of several small boats that he |